The Dignity Collaborative serves as a hub for research, community engagement, and media initiatives that advance dignity in society. Our mission is to connect scholars and practitioners in ongoing efforts to affirm human worth across diverse sectors.
A powerful movement is emerging, bringing together diverse communities to affirm everyone’s inherent value. Interfaith leaders are hosting workshops and dialogues focused on honoring each person’s worth, building relationships, and common aspirations that motivate collective action. These events demonstrate that the desire to uphold dignity is a universal impulse, crossing religious and cultural boundaries.
The Belonging Center at Penn State Altoona—the hub of The Dignity Collaborative—will offer a space for students seeking affirmation and support. Through programs centered on dialogue, mentoring, and wellness, students from all backgrounds discover a welcoming space where their worth is celebrated. The Center’s work makes belonging unconditional, helping students thrive in every area of campus life.
Dignity Day 2026
In 2026, Central European University in Hungary will host a major event for scholars, activists, and leaders to exchange insights on a dignity documentary focusing on protecting dignity and what can happen when it is violated on a personal level.
The annual Dignity Day, set for October 21, 2026, unites cities and campuses in ceremonies and storytelling that amplify the value of every person. Pop-up events respond to conflict and crisis, showing how affirming dignity heals and inspires hope. These initiatives collectively assert that dignity is an enduring promise—realized and renewed for all.
Dignity is the foundation of sustainable and productive human relationships at every level, and its elements—such as acceptance of one’s identity, acknowledgment, accountability, inclusion, and safety—are central to the human experience. When we take the time to understand how our words and actions can honor dignity, we strengthen relationships and improve our ability to work together, especially through disagreement and challenge. This is critical to the effective functioning of government and organizations alike. I’m excited to partner with The Dignity Collaborative to broaden awareness, deepen understanding, and empower people and leaders across sectors to make dignity central to their leadership and service, with positive impact in Centre County and communities across the Commonwealth and beyond.
Dignity Initiatives
- A dignity approach to discourse that offers concrete language and practices for staying in dialogue around tense, polarized, or deeply personal issues—without dehumanizing anyone.
- Guest speakers and keynotes who connect Donna Hicks’s dignity framework to real-world conflict, leadership, healing, and bridge-building in campuses, communities, and public life.
- Real-time strategies for addressing community conflict, including structured dialogue formats and simple, repeatable tools that can be used in public meetings, classrooms, residence halls, athletic settings, and neighborhood forums.
- A flexible “dignity pop-up” model that can be brought into campuses, town halls, libraries, school buildings, athletic facilities, conferences, and community centers as a ready-made structure for working through local conflicts or incidents together.
- Deep community engagement, with gatherings that bring together residents, students, educators, athletes, coaches, faith leaders, nonprofit partners, and public officials to practice dignity across differences instead of avoiding hard conversations.
- Interfaith and cross-worldview dialogue that uses dignity as common ground, creating spaces where people from different religious, spiritual, and non-religious backgrounds can explore convictions, disagreement, and shared concerns without contempt or erasure.
- Athletics and sportsmanship enhancement initiatives that apply dignity principles to team culture, coaching, fan behavior, and game-day environments, strengthening mutual regard and reducing contempt on and off the field.
- School district partnerships that integrate dignity language and skills into K–12 curricula, professional development, athletics and activities programs, restorative practices, and family/community nights.
- Government and civic relations that equip local and state leaders, boards, and agencies with dignity-based practices for strengthening trust, navigating conflict, and engaging the public.
- Integrated leadership development for campus administrators, faculty leaders, student leaders, coaches and athletic directors, superintendents, principals, agency heads, and nonprofit directors who want dignity to be a core leadership competency.
- Speaking engagements and workshops tailored for universities, consortia, conferences, school systems, athletic departments, faith-based organizations, and community coalitions on living and leading with dignity in divided times.
- Hands-on practice spaces (dialogue circles, dignity labs, team workshops, story-based sessions, creative arts formats) where participants learn to recognize when dignity is at risk and how to repair in the moment.
- Collaborative research and learning projects that invite students, faculty, practitioners, athletic programs, congregations, and community partners to study dignity in real settings (campuses, schools, teams, congregations, councils, workplaces) and co-create practical tools.
- A clear invitation to other universities in Pennsylvania and across the nation to:
- Pilot dignity-focused assessments, intergroup/interfaith dialogue structures, athletics and sportsmanship initiatives, and conflict-response models on their own campuses.
- Co-host regional or national dignity convenings.
- Partner on multi-campuses and universities through research, grants, and leadership development centered on dignity, inclusion, and conflict transformation.
- A growing network identity, positioning The Dignity Collaborative as a partner and resource for institutions, school districts, athletic programs, congregations, and communities nationwide that want to embed dignity into teaching, campus and team climate, interfaith and cross-worldview engagement, civic life, and community partnerships.
