The World Café in Singapore

Abstract

The World Café is a simple yet powerful conversational process that helps people engage in constructive dialogue, build personal relationships, foster collaborative learning, and discover newpossibilities for action. Café dialogues enable large groups, often hundreds of people, to think together creatively as part of a single, connected conversation. It has been used by tens of thousands of people on six continents in business, government, health, education, nongovernmental organization (NGO), and community settings. This article describes the range and spread of the World Café in Singapore as part of that nation’s effort to create a national learning culture and to transition from a top-down to a more open and inclusive society. In a multiracial and multireligious setting involving diverse national objectives and multiple levels of the hierarchy, the World Café is making a unique contribution to this young nation’s future.