Breaking Bread
A civic initiative I founded in 2023 that pairs shared meals with facilitated conversation across political, religious, and cultural differences.
Breaking Bread started as a research question. As a first-year student, I studied with Dr. Yudit Kornberg Greenberg how communities across three thousand years used shared food to settle religious conflict. That work became a panel at the 2023 Parliament of the World's Religions and a chapter in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Food. It also left me with a practical question: could a shared meal still do that work on a polarized campus?
I founded Breaking Bread at Rollins College in fall 2023 to find out. It began with monthly dinners and dialogue events, and grew to include interfaith gatherings such as two Mimouna celebrations co-hosted with the Muslim Student Union and Hillel.
How a gathering works
-
Setting the table
Guests arrive, introduce themselves, and sit down to share a meal.
-
First course
Opening questions connect people to one another, so the topic arrives before the disagreement does.
-
Main meal
Once people know each other, the conversation turns to where they genuinely differ, with facilitation that keeps it constructive.
-
Dessert discourse
The group reflects on what they heard, what they still believe, and what they may now understand differently.
Relationships form through repetition, so the goal is a series of meals, not a single event.
Where it has gone
- Rollins College
- Where it began in 2023, drawing more than 100 members in its first week.
- University of Central Florida
- The first expansion beyond Rollins, to one of the largest universities in the country.
- Phoenix Generation Conference
- Its largest program to date: a facilitated dialogue for 400 high school and college students in February 2025.
- Rhodes College
- The newest campus partner, in Memphis, Tennessee.
Breaking Bread is now becoming an independent organization.
Results
At the Phoenix Generation Conference, a conference-wide pre/post survey showed a 19% increase in participants who felt they could have a productive conversation with someone they disagreed with, and a 37% increase in those who felt they could make a positive impact in their community.
Recognition
Breaking Bread was highlighted in Forbes as an example of how colleges are preparing students for civic life, named a WESH 2 News CommUNITY Champion, and featured by Central Florida Public Media, College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, Rollins College, and the Orlando Sentinel. The work also contributed to my selection as an Interfaith America BRAID Fellow and as Omicron Delta Kappa's 2025 National Leader of the Year.
To bring Breaking Bread to a campus or organization, visit the organization's site.
Visit trybreakingbread.com