Partner With ciel
Bringing together expertise in experiential learning, international program design and logistics, and immersive global engagement
CIEL partners with universities, organizations, and institutions to create meaningful learning experiences that engage directly with conflict, division, peacebuilding, and reconciliation.
Our partnerships range from fully managed international programs to targeted program-development support and professional training. Whether you are looking for an experienced study abroad provider, a partner to design and facilitate an immersive program for your organization, or expert guidance on experiential learning and navigating difficult conversations, we build partnerships around your goals, participants, and institutional needs.
At the heart of our programs is CIEL’s longstanding network of trusted local partners around the world, whose expertise, relationships, and perspectives make our immersive learning experiences possible.
Explore our three partnership areas:
UNIVERSITIES
Study abroad & experiential learning
Academic programs, sponsored cohorts, and university-supported opportunities.
ORGANIZATIONS
Customized immersive programs
Programs designed and facilitated around your organization’s mission, audience, and learning goals.
CONSULTING / TRAINING
Bring CIEL’s expertise to your institution
Program design, experiential-learning consulting, conflict engagement, and difficult-conversation training.
1. University Partnerships
Bring immersive experiential learning into your students’ education
CIEL works with colleges and universities to provide academically rigorous experiential learning programs in conflict-affected regions.
Our programs connect students with the people, places, and perspectives shaping conflict, peacebuilding, and reconciliation. Participants engage directly with community leaders, policymakers, practitioners, academics, journalists, activists, and people personally affected by conflict while developing the skills to listen critically, navigate competing narratives, and engage constructively across difference.
Programs built around a region, a field - or both
CIEL programs can provide an interdisciplinary exploration of a particular region and its experience of conflict and reconciliation, or examine a specific academic or professional field through the lens of a divided society.
Programs can be developed around fields including mental health and trauma, healthcare, education, human rights, religion, journalism and storytelling, leadership, and peace and conflict studies, among others.
This allows students and professionals to explore not only the dynamics of conflict itself, but how division and reconciliation shape the issues most relevant to their own field.
Flexible University Partnership Models
There is no single way to partner with CIEL. We work with universities to build a structure that fits their academic goals, administrative requirements, students, and resources.
What CIEL Manages
From educational design to on-the-ground delivery, CIEL can manage the full program experience.
Program Design
Customized programs and itineraries developed around your learning objectives.
Educational Preparation
Pre-travel curriculum, regional and conflict-context education, experiential-learning preparation, and structured reflection.
People & Perspectives
Connections with academics, policymakers, journalists, practitioners, community leaders, activists, and local organizations representing a range of experiences and perspectives.
Travel & Logistics
Accommodation, in-country transportation, meals, scheduling, and day-to-day program coordination.
Risk Management
Security planning, local expertise, and the ability to adapt programming to changing conditions.
Facilitation & Participant Support
Experienced CIEL educators accompany the group, facilitate learning and reflection, and support participants throughout the program.
2. Programs for Organizations
Transform your mission into an immersive learning experience
CIEL partners with nonprofit organizations, professional associations, foundations, educational initiatives, interfaith groups, and other mission-aligned organizations to design and facilitate immersive programs in conflict-affected and divided societies. CIEL works collaboratively with each partner to translate those goals into a thoughtful and educationally rigorous program.
Built Around Your Organization
Rather than adapting your group to a standard itinerary, CIEL can build the experience around the questions you want participants to explore and the learning outcomes you want them to take home.
CIEL programs traditionally offer a rich, multidimensional exploration of a region and its conflict, grounding participants in the cultural, historical, political, and religious contexts that have shaped it. Programs examine how societies experience and respond to conflict, division, polarization, and violence, while engaging directly with the people and organizations working toward peace, reconciliation, and social change.
Alternatively, programs can explore a region through the lens of a particular field, profession, or theme, allowing participants to examine how conflict and division intersect with the issues most relevant to their own work or area of study.
For example, a program might explore how mental health practitioners understand trauma and healing in a divided society; consider the challenges facing educators across social divides; or investigate questions of religion, human rights, migration, journalism, or civil society.
Programs bring these questions into direct engagement with the people and communities living and working with them - combining expert discussions, community encounters, site visits, cultural experiences, and structured reflection.
Choose the Level of Partnership You Need
Build on an Existing CIEL Program
Use one of CIEL’s established regional programs as the foundation for your group’s experience. Programs can be delivered in their existing form or adapted to reflect your participants, interests, professional field, and learning goals.
Develop a Customized Program
Work with CIEL from the beginning to design and deliver a new immersive learning experience around your organization’s mission, audience, and desired outcomes. CIEL can develop the educational framework, itinerary, meetings, preparation, logistics, facilitation, and reflection process as one integrated program.
Strengthen a Program You Already Have
Already developing or running an immersive program? CIEL can provide targeted support where you need it - from educational and itinerary design to local connections, logistics, participant preparation, or facilitation.
3. Consulting & Training
Bring CIEL’s expertise to your campus or organization
Not every partnership requires an international program.
CIEL also works with universities and organizations to strengthen how they design experiential learning, engage with conflict and polarization, and create spaces in which difficult issues can be explored constructively.
Experiential Learning & Program Consulting
Build stronger immersive learning experiences.
Drawing on two decades of experience developing and facilitating programs in conflict-affected societies, CIEL advises institutions that are developing or strengthening their own experiential learning programs, from curriculum and itinerary development to participant preparation, facilitation, logistics, and ethical engagement in conflict-affected regions.
Support can range from a focused. consultation on one element of a program to an ongoing partnership from initial concept through implementation.
Conflict Resolution & Difficult Conversations Training
Build the skills and structures needed to engage across difference.
Campuses and organizations are increasingly being asked to hold conversations around issues that are deeply personal, contested, and polarizing.
CIEL offers interactive trainings in conflict resolution, navigating difficult conversations, and creating spaces for constructive dialogue, tailored for students, faculty, staff, and organizational teams.
trainings can be tailored for students, faculty, staff, administrators, organizational teams, and community leaders.
Let’s Build Something Together
Every CIEL partnership begins with a conversation about what you want your participants to learn, experience, and carry forward. Whether you have a program already in mind or are just beginning to explore what’s possible, we’d love to hear from you.
Interested in partnering with us?
Reach out if you have any questions or want to learn more.