Women’s Institute for Leadership and Learning

The World Cafe is a powerful conversational

process for thinking together, evolving collective intelligence and creating actionable results.

It is an innovative, yet simple forum for hosting conversations that matter.

These dialogues link and build on each other as people move between groups, cross-pollinate ideas, and discover new insights into issues that are most important in our lives, our work, and our communities.

The October 2010 Seneca Falls Dialogues will adapt the World Café format. The topic is: "Stereotypes, Images and Misconceptions of Muslim Women." The inter-generational dialogue will be both "intrafaith" (between Muslim women) and "interfaith" (between Muslim women and persons of others faiths). It will be led by Rev. Allison Stokes and   

Dr. Sarwat Malik, with a special follow-up discussion from World Cafe facilitator, author, and President of the World Innovation Network,  Eleanor LeCain.  Her work is dedicated to identifying and building on breakthroughs to help improve individual lives, communities and countries.

of the  Dr. Eleanor LeCain

Dr. Allison Stokes, author and activist, is a pastor for 26 years in the United Church of Christ, former director of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, and current director of the University of Rochester's Interfaith Chapel

Stokes’ commitment to interfaith ministry led her to become the driving force behind establishing the Women's Interfaith Institute in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts in 1992, and later in 2002 the Women’s Interfaith Institute in the Finger Lakes. These nonprofit activist organizations are dedicated to empowering women of all faiths to pursue religious and spiritual leadership roles.

Dr. Sarwat S. Malik is Co-Founder and Vice Chair of the Muslim Women's Fund (MWF), a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. MWF, a global fund focused on the educational and economic advancement of Muslim women and girls.  Committed to interfaith dialogue, she also serves on the advisory board of the Center for Interfaith Studies and Dialogue' at Nazareth College in Pittsford, NY.

Dr. Malik advocates and supports contemporary scholarship of the religious interpretation of women's status in Islam, to address the challenges Muslim women face due to patriarchal interpretations and cultural practices which often trump faith based rights.  She supports gender equality and believes that gender equality can have a positive impact on families, communities and nations.

In May 2010, Women's  e News awarded her the honor "21 leaders for the 21st Century in NYC."

Eleanor LeCain is a leading expert in breakthrough solutions, showing citizen and government leaders the transformational programs, people and principles that can improve results and help build a new world.  She served as Assistant Secretary of State and Executive Director of Blueprint 2000, futures planning for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Currently she speaks about leadership for a new world and the vital role of women to emerging and established leaders around the world from Harvard University to Kyoto, Japan.