Coming Home through Adopted Family

A Community Supported by the Network Catalyzers Program 2025

The United States is home to the world's largest foreign-born population. Immigrants represented 14.3 percent of the 335 million U.S. residents in 2023—near the historical high of 14.8 percent in 1890.

Immigrant families are made up of numerous individual identities - race, culture, language, gender, sexuality, educational attainment, and more. This makes the family dinner table a microcosm of the heated discourse happening at national levels. 

Can we get curious about how to participate in these conversations so that we create more belonging rather than estrangement - for the sake of our collective future?

“Coming Home through Adopted Family” is an experiment in discovering ways of relating to our own families by cultivating new, intergenerational relationships. We are looking for members of immigrant families to participate in a series of conversations around values and experiences while practicing the skills of belonging. The goal of this journey will be to “return home” with new perspectives and a knack for embodying the kind of belonging that leads to genuine conversation.

Is this you?

  • Currently living in the United States

  • Part of an immigrant family (where at least two sets of cultural values coexist)

  • Interested in bridging differences rather than ignoring them or fighting about them

  • Committed to prioritizing the study of belonging this year

If so, you can expect

  • Support from a group of like-minded individuals from diverse backgrounds

  • Active participation in identifying themes for exploration and sustaining the conversation

  • Facilitated practice in the skills of belonging - e.g. embodiment, observation/nonjudgment, listening, giving/receiving acknowledgments, asking powerful questions, etc.

  • New intergenerational relationships within which to practice skills of belonging

  • A deeper understanding of yourself through encounters with others

How to register

Express your interest using this Google Form (and forward this invite to one younger or older family member). We will reach out no later than Mar 17th, 2025 to begin building our shared vision.

Key Dates

  • Feb 14 – Registration opens

  • Mar 7 – Participants contacted

  • Mar 21 – First group meeting

  • Sep 5 – Final group meeting

Commitment: Online sessions, twice a month (2 hours total per month, over 6 months). Participants are also encouraged to apply skills outside sessions and reflect on their experiences in a collective journal.

Watch this introductory video by Edwin Zhao, the catalyst of this community, to learn more!

Edwin Zhao is committed to a future in which collaboration and dissent are both grounded in deep human connection. He is a coach and facilitator who brings together diverse groups to study the fundamental gestures of being-in-relationship; embodiment, breathing, listening, observation without judgment, requests, and so forth. He is also co-founder of Ode, a startup bringing curious, unagenda-ed listening to healthcare spaces and studying its effects on patient experience, medical decision-making, and health worker burnout.

Visit the 2025 Network Catalyzers Program page for more information about other communities supported by this program.