A Day to Design for Belonging
What comes after the welcome?
Last year, more than 300 people from across Idaho and beyond explored what it means to create a community where Everyone Is Welcome. A welcome is a beginning. It opens the door. Then the harder question arrives: what makes someone want to stay and participate?
Belonging lives in specific moments. It’s the first five minutes of a meeting. It’s the way a new student finds a seat at lunch, or how a congregation learns a newcomer’s name and remembers it the next week. It’s who speaks, who gets interrupted, and who gets asked what they think. None of these moments are small, and none of them are accidental. Each one can be designed, and each one can honor human dignity.
At the fourth annual Cultivating Compassionate Communities Conference, we’ll spend a day learning how to design them well.
Why belonging is a human rights question
In 1958, ten years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted, Eleanor Roosevelt asked where human rights begin. Her answer: “In small places, close to home.” She meant neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and community centers. Unless rights hold meaning there, she said, they hold little meaning anywhere.
The UDHR agrees. Article 29 says each of us develops fully only within a community, and that we owe something to the communities that make us who we are. Belonging, then, is not a nice extra. It is the condition that lets people participate, contribute, and thrive. When we design for belonging, we are doing human rights work in the rooms where life actually happens.
Meet Our Keynote Speaker: Dr. Susie Wise
Dr. Susie Wise is a designer and educator whose work spans education, tech, and the social sector. A longtime educator at Stanford’s d.school, she founded the K12 Lab Network, co-created Liberatory Design, and wrote Design for Belonging: How to Build Inclusion and Collaboration in Your Communities.
Dr. Wise holds a PhD in Learning Sciences and Technology Design. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their cat, Wabi-Sabi.
In her keynote, Design for Belonging: How to Make it Happen, Dr. Wise will begin with a simple truth. Belonging is a feeling, and each of us experiences it differently. No one can design a feeling directly. We can, however, design the conditions that help it take root: spaces that offer invitations, rituals that draw people together, roles that carry authentic responsibility, and systems that are respectful and support creativity and innovation.
Drawing from her book, Dr. Wise will share a concrete framework that offers accessible ways to build belonging and to explore the intersection of inclusion and innovation in work, schools, and communities.
You don’t need a background in design or an education to use these tools. You just need a room you care about.
Share Your Work: Call for Session Proposals
We invite practitioners, scholars, educators, and community leaders to propose breakout sessions that carry this year’s theme into practice. We are seeking 60-minute interactive sessions led by people who have designed, tested, or are refining approaches to belonging in their own settings. Those settings may include workplaces, faith communities, schools, universities, nonprofit organizations, government, and civic life.
Your session might examine facilitation structures that bring all voices into decisions. It might address onboarding practices that turn newcomers into committed members, or policies that remove barriers to full participation. We also welcome other work that makes dignity and inclusion part of daily life.
Proposals are due Tuesday, December 1.
Bring Belonging to Life: Become a Conference Partner
More than 300 people from across the Treasure Valley and beyond will gather at the Cultivating Compassionate Communities Conference to learn how to make human rights a lived reality.
Sponsors make this conference possible and accessible. By partnering with us, you will create opportunities for a growing network of community leaders, professionals, and neighbors to shape a more just and joyful world together. To learn more about the various ways to be involved, please contact Sierra, our Development Manager, at sierra@wassmuthcenter.org or 208.506.2389.
Join Us
The 2027 Cultivating Compassionate Communities Conference will take place on:
Saturday, January 30, 2027
Together, we’ll connect, learn, and create a more compassionate future.