In the summer of 2020, against the backdrop of a global pandemic and national uprisings for racial justice, a quiet question began to circulate among educators and organizers in Charlotte, North Carolina: What can we learn if we stop to listen? This question was not posed rhetorically or metaphorically. It emerged from a place of deep uncertainty and reckoning—a recognition that the systems meant to sustain life, justice, and learning were under profound strain. As schools shut their doors and protesters filled the streets, organizers and educators alike were asking not only what to do, but how to be. How to move, relate, and educate in a moment of rupture.

Out of this moment, the Listening Project was born. Designed as a community-based participatory research (CBPR) initiative, the project aimed to understand the landscape of community organizing in Charlotte by listening to those embedded within it. Through a series of unstructured narrative interviews, the project invited local organizers to reflect on their experiences: What brought them to the work? What sustained them? What did they learn along the way? The method was simple, yet radical in its refusal to extract. Listening was not only a data-gathering practice; it was a relational ethic and a pedagogical stance.

The impetus for this research was also practical. A social justice and community organizing (SJCO) certification program was being developed at Queens University of Charlotte, an institution with a complex racial history and a limited legacy of community engagement with Charlotte’s organizing communities of color. The project team understood that before they could design a relevant curriculum, they needed to build trust—and that trust would only emerge through genuine listening and mutual respect. The Listening Project was thus born.