The reality of a modern-day expeditionary military force with goals of establishing security and enabling nation-building in some of the most volatile areas of the world means that effective cross-cultural partnership has never been so crucial. Air Force and Department of Defense leadership at the highest levels has long acknowledged the importance of developing cross-cultural competence in its members, and current efforts by the Air Force Culture and Language Center established in 2006 are moving rapidly closer to that goal, developing distributed learning systems and incorporating cross-cultural training into every level of professional military education. With the high rate of deployment, however, the challenge to ensure that each member is adequately and specifically prepared prior to deployment is monumental. In one approach to meet this challenge, the author and associates have developed ENGAGE, a grassroots experiment in cross-cultural pre-deployment training, featuring an interactive model which invites attendees to participate in their own learning through dialogue, active illustrations, and actual cultural practices which amount to more of an immersion experience than a briefing. As each participant is engaged, stereotypes begin to break down, and a mentality of respectful, discerning, and creative approaches to cross-cultural interaction develops. Historical Role-Play is appended. (Contains 4 footnotes.) [This paper was published in: Proceedings of Intercultural Competence Conference August, 2010, Vol. 1, pp. 78-101.]