The world, at times, can seem like a dark and divided place. There are those, however, who are trying to change this.

Press Release

Toni Boucher, former member of the Connecticut Senate and House of Representatives, recently completed training to become a facilitator for the National Institute for Civil Discourse’s (NICD) Next Generation program. Boucher joined eight other current and former state legislators from Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Tennessee at the University of Delaware for the training.

The purpose of the program, created more than a decade ago, is to prepare current and former state legislators to help public officials build productive relationships across partisan, ideological, cultural and geographic lines so that they can engage their differences in a constructive manner and produce good public policy.

Boucher was first elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1996 and then to the Connecticut Senate twelve years later where she served until 2019.

Upon completing the training, Boucher and the other facilitators led members of the Delaware House of Representatives in the workshop “Building Trust Through Civil Discourse.” The mission of the workshop is to provide legislators with an opportunity to explore the benefits of improving the level of civil discourse in their state’s legislature and more effectively work across the aisle.

According to Dr. Thomas Little, Next Generation’s Legislative Liaison, “NICD Next Generation facilitators are dedicated to helping America’s state legislators engage across ideological an partisan lines to overcome the polarization that threatens to cripple our nation.”