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Sixth Global Summit: The Role of Community-Facing Institutions in Maintaining Social Cohesion in Times of Crisis and Division

Publication Date:

22/01/2026

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Event Reports

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Civic EngagementCommunity and Social Cohesion AcademyPublic LibrariesSafe SpacesSixth Global SummitSocial CohesionToronto

— 8 minutes reading time

This report provides a summary of discussions during this session and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Strong Cities Network Management Unit, Strong Cities members, event sponsors or participants.

Introduction

On 9 – 11 December 2025, the Strong Cities Network held its Sixth Global Summit in Toronto (Canada), bringing together more than 300 representatives of local governments, national governments, civil society organisations, academia, the private sector and international organisations. This included nearly 60 mayors and governors, as well as 110 other local government officials from 100 cities and 42 countries. Under the theme Stronger Together: Forging Safer, Connected, Thriving Cities in a Changing World, the Summit provided a platform for city leaders to share practical and innovative solutions to prevent and respond to hate, extremism and polarisation, and build safer, more resilient and more inclusive communities

The Summit agenda included a parallel session on the Role of Community-Facing Institutions in Maintaining Social Cohesion in Times of Crisis and Division, which explored the power of effective partnerships between cities and relevant community-facing institutions to build and maintain social cohesion. The session focused on cases across the United States and Canada to study three specific institutions – a community foundation, public library and government office – and how they cooperate with their city to form a local ecosystem of prevention.

Featured Speakers

• Eunice Lee, Senior Programme Manager, Strong Cities Network – Moderator
• Garien Gatewood, Deputy Mayor for Community Safety, Chicago (Illinois, USA)
• Mary Thomas, President and CEO, CFLeads (USA)
• Moe Hosseini-Ara, City Librarian, Toronto Public Library (Ontario, Canada)

Key Takeaways

1. Local institutions – libraries, universities, businesses and more – are key hubs for engagement, innovation and belonging in communities and important partners for local governments.
2. Public libraries can provide valuable access to literacy and connectedness initiatives at no cost to residents across a wide range of ages, backgrounds and contexts.
3. Community foundations play vital roles in supporting leadership development and sustainable change for social cohesion in local communities.
4. Local governments build bridges between local institutions and across communities with different backgrounds and viewpoints – they are the connectors and conveners for various institutions accomplishing important work around social cohesion.

Key Themes 

1. Reimagine Connection with Local Institutions

With rising concerns around global patterns of social isolation, polarisation and conflict and their local impacts, the session’s speakers discussed the role of key local partners – including libraries, universities, community gardens, hospitals and local businesses – in hate and violence prevention and intervention. They highlighted how cities around the world are reimagining how traditional institutions can innovate and build deeper connections in and across their communities for lasting change. They underscored the catalytic role that local governments can play in this regard.

Moe Hosseini-Ara, City Librarian, Toronto Public Library (TPL), described the unique opportunities found in local libraries to promote social inclusion. Through physical locations that are open seven days a week and serve over a hundred communities across Toronto, public libraries are where the community comes together. Each library branch, he shared, tailors programming to the residents it serves, providing spaces for individuals of all ages and backgrounds to gather, access services and connect. For example, TPL has invested in diverse programming to build belonging and reduce loneliness and isolation for seniors, provide free on-site crisis and social services and mental health support, and build financial empowerment and digital citizen (including AI literacy) skills. Moe also described the impact of partnerships with the federal government to provide settlement programs that connect newcomers to services that help find work, learn English and more.

During an interactive portion of the parallel session, a city councillor from Kings County (Nova Scotia, Canada) shared that even the little free library in her neighbourhood still functions as a meeting place despite having no affiliation with the public library network. Because it appears as a library on local maps, the standing library has resulted in residents organically gathering to donate and collect books, including her.

Another city councillor highlighted how local community gardens in Flin Flon (Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada) also partner for inclusion and connection, securing regular spaces for residents to plant, grow and harvest a food forest together.

Garien Gatewood, Deputy Mayor for Community Safety, Chicago (Illinois, USA), described how the City partners with the Chicago Public Library to host a series of late night video game nights and other programming during high-risk hours. The game nights and other collaborative offerings through the city – including activations like late night ball – are aimed at creating welcoming spaces for youth and adults of highest promise to engage safely. Collaborative programmes like these have marked impacts on connectedness and crime in cities and illustrate the potential of innovative public-private partnerships; late night ball, for instance, became possible through the investments of multiple organisations, including the Mayor’s Office of Community Safety, Chicago Park District, City Colleges of Chicago, Chicago Department of Public Health, Project sWISH, Operation Basketball and Lyft. Deputy Mayor Gatewood also shared other City-led partnerships to advance community safety and prevent violence, such as collaborations with other levels of government, businesses and local foundations to commit $100 million in funding for community violence interventions; with Chicago’s City Colleges to offer a Victim Advocate training program; and with medical centres for violence prevention and recovery.

2. Partner for Sustainable, Long-Lasting Impact

Building the skills and leadership abilities of local community foundations and communities develops and maximises the impact of community-driven solutions. Mary Thomas, President and CEO of CFLeads, has helped foundations move away from being purely a funder to considering the impact of place-based programmes in advancing cohesion.

CFLeads approaches sustainable impact through upskilling both foundation staff and local community leaders through initiatives like their Community Leadership Lab, Executive Leadership Institute and other training and peer learning networks and opportunities. Mary remarked on the importance of “building social capital […] in the life of a community foundation” and engaging directly with communities to shape and drive solutions. In another example, the Spartanburg County Foundation in Spartanburg (South Carolina, USA) developed a nationally-recognised development model for local community leaders; over a span of twenty years, the Grassroots Leadership Development Institute trained more than 500 leaders rooted in communities to learn about leading change and other skills such as grant-writing and connecting with other local leaders. Mary also cited another programme, the Jugaad Leadership Program in St. Cloud (Minnesota, USA), which looks to equip underrepresented community members with the skills, resources and knowledge to become effective leaders and create a next generation of changemakers.

Participants asked how to leverage and incentivise support for initiatives around social cohesion, particularly with risk-averse foundations or through corporate social responsibility efforts. Deputy Mayor Gatewood mentioned that the City of Chicago has proposed an alternative way to generate revenue to support public programmes through a Social Media Amusement Tax on social media businesses.

3. Create Safe Spaces for Bridgebuilding and Dialogue

Libraries and other local institutions are increasingly looking to host and support accessible, reliable, safe spaces for dialogue in cities. For example, TPL has committed to fostering accessible civic engagement and democracy programmes and resources for all residents. Through partnerships with organisations such as the Samara Centre for Democracy, TPL also offers safe spaces to engage in civil discourse and enter difficult conversations across difference. As a “democratizing force in communities,” Moe said libraries provide information and services to everyone while respecting the distinct needs of the neighbourhoods they serve and the people who live in them. As society more commonly encounters forces aiming to isolate and polarise its members, he underscored how libraries are rare places where individuals can engage on challenging topics and connect face-to-face with others on divergent views. A representative from the Waterloo Region (Canada) also provided information on the Coalition of Muslim Women’s bridgebuilding initiatives, which are aimed at bringing individuals and communities together around different ideas, questions and perspectives to build awareness and cohesion.

A representative from Gdańsk (Poland) also provided details on the City’s strategy to measure and monitor progress towards social cohesion (such as mental health indicators and health risks) to visualise their accessibility and distribution across city districts. The representative said that an overarching goal is for each district to have at least one place where residents can gather and feel that is “not only for one group”.

Next Steps

The session demonstrated various ways local governments and local institutions – libraries, community foundations – are creatively partnering to build belonging, connectedness and cohesion. Strong Cities will continue to support tailored efforts in various local contexts around the globe by supporting collaborative city-led solutions among its extensive membership and beyond.

Key next steps include:

• Identifying emerging opportunities for collaboration between member cities and local institutions to build cohesion – while thinking creatively about what kinds of institutions to partner with and how.
• Equipping local leaders through training, skills-building and peer learning around development and implementation of collaborative, cross-sector approaches – including building platforms for civic engagement, hate and violence prevention and community dialogue, as well as securing long-term sustainability of programming.

Additional Resources

Recent Strong Cities policy briefs and resources:

• City Leadership in Partnering with Local Communities for Social Cohesion: Ten Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• National-Local Cooperation: Opportunities and Lessons Learned for Secondary and Tertiary Prevention, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• City Leadership in the Face of Rising Incivility and Polarisation: Ten Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• Innovations in Prevention: Piloting Multi-Actor Frameworks in Small and Mid-Sized Cities in the United States, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Toolkit for Cities: Building a Multi-Actor Local Prevention Framework, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Toolkit for Manitoba Municipalities: Addressing Anti-Government Hate and Harassment, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Guide for Cities: Preventing Hate, Extremism & Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, updated 2025
• A Guide for Mayors: Preventing and Responding to Hate, Extremism & Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, updated 2025
• A Guide for City-Led Response, Strong Cities Network, May 2024
• City Spotlights Library, Strong Cities Network

Donors & Partners

The Sixth Global Summit was co-hosted with the City of Toronto and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and delivered with generous support from the Government of Canada, The Fourth Freedom Forum, The Toronto Foundation and Charities Aid Foundation.

Contact Information 

For more information about the Sixth Global Summit or the Strong Cities Network, please contact [email protected].

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