To support the community in building positive relationships, the Dispute Resolution Center of Thurston County (DRC) will offer a free communication and conflict resolution workshop:
Having Tough Conversations in Challenging Times Sunday, December 18th, 2016, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. at United Churches of Olympia, 110 - 11th Ave. SE in downtown Olympia The workshop will focus on communication tools to help participants deepen their understanding of, and identify common ground with, those who have different perspectives, opinions, and experiences of the state of our community, nation and world. Adults and children ages 9 and up are welcome to attend. Members of the DRC’s Youth Empowerment Services (YES!) team will be on hand to work with kids ages 9-13 in skill-building activities and talking circles, apart from the adults. The workshop is free, but donations are welcome. Registration closes on December 14th. Please register by calling 360/956-1155.
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![]() Joe Sanders joined the DRC staff in October as the new Community Engagement Manager. He brings to our organization 35 years' experience in marketing, public relations and fund-raising in a variety of non-profit human services, healthcare and higher education settings. Most recently he served as Director of Marketing and Communications for Lutheran Community Services Northwest for 15 years. A native of Northwest Montana, Joe holds a degree in Television Production from Montana State University. He and his wife, Diane, lived and worked in Seattle, the Tri-Cities, New Zealand and, most recently, India, before moving to Olympia earlier this year. Elaine Vradenburgh, the DRC's Community Engagement Manager for the past five years, has founded Window Seat Media, a non-profit that nurtures "stories that build resilience, identity, and connection." "Elaine spearheaded tremendous growth in our fundraising and marketing activities in her time here," notes Evan Ferber, the DRC's retiring Executive Director. "Besides coordinating the annual Toast event, she broadened our use of social media, was instrumental in grant writing, updated the DRC's branding, and so much more. We're very grateful for her many contributions to our mission and wish her all the best in her new venture." "As we say farewell to Elaine, we're excited to welcome Joe as a new member of the DRC family. He and our new executive director, Jody Suhrbier (who starts her job on December 1st), will be part of a dynamic team leading the DRC into our next 25 years!" Well-wishers filled the Woman's Club of Olympia on the evening of Saturday, November 5th, to honor Evan Ferber, the DRC's founder and guiding light, who is retiring at the end of December. Memories, songs, poems, hugs and laughs were shared - and copious amounts of delicious pie and ice cream were consumed.
Thank You, Evan, for your tireless efforts to spread the seeds of peace-making and your legacy of service to our community!
Jody is currently the Engagement Manager with the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra where her special focus was development and marketing as well as developing and managing the organization’s budget and revenue forecast. She holds a Master of Nonprofit Management degree from Regis University and a Bachelor Degree from the University of Washington. She has strong affiliation with planned giving and philanthropic organizations in the South Sound.
Jody is a resident of Olympia and was a key player in the capital campaign that built the highly successful Hands on Children’s Museum in Olympia. She has strong community ties in the greater Olympia area. Jody’s appointment concludes an extensive effort by the DRC Board that affirmed the organization’s mission, vision, core values and core competencies. Mary Barrett, incoming President of the Board, observed: “Evan Ferber has built an extraordinary organization that models civility and respect in our community. He has much to be proud of as he retires from his position of Executive Director. The Board could not be more pleased that Jody Suhrbier will step in where Evan leaves off to take the next step in realizing a South Sound community that has and uses healthy and respectful conflict resolution skills.” Plans are underway to schedule events for the community to meet Jody and celebrate the beginning of a new era for the DRC. DATE: August 16, 2016
Contact: Terry Teale (360) 459-8270, [email protected] FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DISPUTE RESOLUTION CENTER INVITES APPLICATIONS FOR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR POSITION The Dispute Resolution Center of Thurston County is an Olympia-based non-profit organization whose mission is to empower people to resolve issues through mediation services and conflict resolution training. Evan Ferber, Founding Director of the Thurston County Dispute Resolution Center will retire on December 30, 2016 after more than twenty-five years of leadership and service. The Board of Directors of the DRC is inviting applications to fill the Executive Director position that Evan will vacate at the end of 2016. The Board is looking for a dynamic leader who shares the core values of the DRC community and who has the vision and experience to build on the organization’s strong foundation of service delivery, volunteer participation and community outreach. The Board encourages interested applicants to apply by September 1, 2016 – though the position will remain open until filled. Application information and the position description may be found on the Dispute Resolution Center’s website: www.mediatethurston.org/job-opportunities. Recognition given by Elaine Vradenburgh at the annual picnic in July I met Mary five years ago at one of the first DRC meetings I attended shortly after I was hired. Our database vendor was introducing our new donor database to a small group of staff and volunteers. Mary was a new volunteer and was eager to use her background and skills in nonprofit development and database administration to help us take this big technological leap. Little did she know at that time that she would ‘co’ facilitate a project that has helped us to raise a little over $700,000 in the past five years.
We, at the DRC, share a strong value of collaboration. We practice this value every day at the mediation table, when we invite people to sit across from each other to find a path through conflict together, and by providing ‘co’ facilitators for that process. Our value of collaboration, and by extension the ‘co’ model, acknowledges and normalizes that no one person has all the answers, tools or skills to tackle every problem. And, it celebrates the power and promise of community. Mary embodied this value of collaboration by bringing the ‘co’ model to her database work. It was rare to see her without another person at the computer trouble shooting the latest issue or building a new function or producing a report. Thank goodness, for me, that Mary embraced the ‘co’ model from day one! You see, in the fundraising world, donor databases serve as both the memory and the party planning part of the organization’s brain. I happen to have a brain that is equal parts savvy and impatient when it comes to such technology. I love to be efficient and organized. Yet I absolutely hate to read instruction manuals and troubleshoot when technology isn’t working. In true DRC style Mary gave strength-based feedback and celebrated with me when I figured something out on my own. She was always there to problem-solve and to share her expertise. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I wouldn’t have been able to do my job without Mary by my side. One of Mary’s many skills is an incredible ability to connect the details to the big picture. I notice and value this skill because it is essential for good fundraising. She quickly and masterfully understood how small adjustments to our systems of tracking data would enhance relationships and build our mission. Those “small adjustments” however, sometimes took months to operationalize in the imperfect product we inherited. Mary’s tireless dedication to this singular project was utterly impressive. She, alongside fellow volunteers Bonnie Rose, Kitty Parker, and Pauline Houx, have spent hundreds of hours trouble shooting, repairing, refining and building outputs that help me do my job better and strengthen the organization. I can’t think of a more fitting time to recognize Mary. Mary’s most recent accomplishment has been in helping us transition to our next database iteration. Again, in the ‘co’ model, she worked with other database volunteers to research new products and to prepare our data for the transition. It was a huge step and we’re excited to see where this new software will take us! Mary has been a gift to our organization. We cannot thank her enough for the hours and hours and hours she has poured into this project. "Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this life changing class." -Conflict Resolution Class Participant, Washington Correctional Center Organizational values matter. From the outside, the values of an organization may seem like just an aspirational list of words on a webpage, cliché even. But when values are practiced with intention across the organization, powerful things can happen.
One of the DRC’s core values is personal empowerment. Conflict is hard, and we believe that everyone has the strength and courage to work through conflict with integrity and respect. Sometimes we just need to be asked the right questions to discover what's at the root of the problem, or perhaps we just need a space where we feel safe enough to communicate our needs and values to the other person. We practice this value every day at the mediation table when we help guide clients toward deeper understanding. We also encourage personal empowerment by inviting our volunteers to engage deeply in our work in ways they find personally meaningful. Not only are DRC volunteers carrying out almost 100% of our direct services as mediators and phone conciliators, we encourage volunteers to help us make our services accessible to all members of the community. While attending the Evergreen Program, Social Psychology of the Prison Industrial Complex, DRC volunteer mediator and trainer, Vicki Martin, had an idea. How could she use her DRC training to bring conflict resolution skills to residents at the Washington Correctional Center (WCC) in Shelton? She brought her idea to Linda Gaffney, a DRC volunteer and retired employee at the Department of Corrections, and to DRC staff to see how she could make this happen. In May, a 5-week class began with a group of about 12 men at WCC. Vicki, joined by DRC volunteers Lynne Stockwell and Mike Rowswell, introduced students to a variety of conflict resolution theories, tools, and skills. They talked about the anger arousal cycle, conflict styles, and identifying the difference between issues and interests, among other topics and skill-building activities. At the end of the program, the DRC received a thank you letter from the program participants inviting us back to hold a reoccurring class: "...we could help facilitate, tutor or promote your curriculum. There are about 600 permanent men here that cycle out every couple of years - some directly to the community, others to transition to short term prisons. We would like to continue to host your trainings... to provide opportunities for men that want to be role models, leaders, and earn respect from the communities we serve." We all have the capacity to learn skills to manage conflict more effectively in our day to day lives. It's not rocket science; what we teach is actually really basic. The reason it’s so transformative is because many of us didn't grow up with these skills. Others didn't have adults in our lives who modeled respectful, nonviolent conflict resolution when we were children. As adults these skills often come to us as an eureka moment: "A ha! That's how I can get relief and restore this relationship. Of course!" It's still not easy, and each of us has different barriers that make conflict more or less difficult to manage. But it's doable. Each and every one of us can be leaders paving the way to a more peaceful life. Evan Ferber, Founding Director of the Thurston County Dispute Resolution Center will retire on December 30, 2016 after over twenty-five years of leadership and service. Evan’s commitment to integrity, respect, civility and compassion is a powerful legacy and the foundation that underpins the future of the Dispute Resolution Center.
For the last two years, the DRC Board of Directors has worked with Evan to strongly position the organization to prepare for the transition from a founding director to what we call “the next generation” director who will succeed him. The Board affirmed the vision and mission of the DRC. Together with staff and volunteers, we conducted a review of the underlying values of the organization, its cultural characteristics and its core competencies. We set ambitious goals for fundraising to ensure that the organization would be financially stable as we moved through transition. And we identified areas of emphasis to grow our services over time and to sustain and diversify the organization. The time for this transition is upon us – and we are confident that the work that the staff and the board has done over the past two years has prepared us to move the DRC into the future with strength and in a way that honors Evan and his legacy. On August 1, 2016, the board announced a position vacancy for the Executive Director beginning December 1, 2016. We are looking for a dynamic leader to move the organization confidently into the future. The board invites all of you to help us find the “next generation” director and encourage applications for this position. The announcement is posted on the DRC’s website. The position will stay “open” until we make a final offer. We will begin reading applications early in September, so we encourage applications to be made in August. The Dispute Resolution Center of Thurston County is strong because of the communities that it serves and that serve it. The funding and support we receive from generous donors, foundations, government agencies, and the judiciary help provide the financial support essential to provide and grow services. The human capital that our volunteers so readily and generously provide to deliver services in a professional and compassionate way is the core to our success. The future is bright for the DRC – and together we honor the legacy of Evan and those who worked with him to found this wonderful organization. By Carly Thornburg, DRC Volunteer ManagerBuilding community is essential in today’s fragmented, digitalized world. Community can provide the connection, vulnerability, and support that all humans crave. How is community created? How does a community support its members? What happens when things go wrong in community?
This June, DRC Training Manager, Carrie Stringer, and I had the pleasure of attending two trainings that addressed these questions. The first was Introduction to Restorative Practices by the International Institute for Restorative Practices, or IIRP. Forty people from DRCs across the state gathered for 3 days to gain some consistent language and practices to offer restorative practices to schools. Restorative Practices are a set of tools and processes that focus on relationships: building them and restoring them. We were introduced to a circle facilitation model: a question is proposed, a talking piece is passed around, and each participant has an opportunity to respond based on their own experience without cross-talk. The days began with having fun together. The circle model was used to share our hopes for restorative practices in Washington Schools, our take-aways from activities, and our perspectives. We played games to get to know each other. This practice allowed us to build trust and rapport as a learning community. Similar to mediation, restorative practices include using emotionally-intelligent affective statements and focusing on values and needs. Although we were eager to learn the tools to fix problems when they arise, this training taught me a valuable lesson: if community doesn’t exist in the first place, then there is nothing there to restore when an incident occurs. Later we learned a set of restorative questions and techniques to facilitate restorative conferences to address misbehaviors in a community. Restorative conferencing focuses on including an offender in the process of creating a plan to repair harm done. In mediation and restorative conferences, the facilitators are neutral and everyone is offered uninterrupted time to share their story. Mediation can be considered a restorative practice, because it does have the ability to restore broken relationships; however mediation and restorative conferences are different. During mediation the parties are sometimes joined by support persons who simply listen and provide moral support. The process guides the parties through opening statements, agenda building, negotiation, and possibly a caucus. During a restorative conference each person is joined by a support person (or people) and representatives from the greater community who contribute to the process by providing their perspective. All parties are led through a series of questions using the circle model to explore what happened, how they were impacted, and what can be done to make things right. The next training was called Cultural Competency and Beyond by the F.A.C.E. Consulting Collaborative from Seattle WA. The training focused on building knowledge and skills for growing more effective cross-cultural relationships and partnerships. “Culture,” as defined by by Gary Wederspahn “is the shared set of assumptions, values, and beliefs of a group of people by which they organized their common life”. Our cultural background is a powerful lens through which we perceive, experience, and understand the world around us. Remaining culturally flexible and adaptable takes practice and intention. By examining our own biases, automatic unearned privileges, and the dominant structures that reinforce social inequity we were able to explore what it means to be an ally and to be receptive for the truths of other people, especially when those truths seem to threaten the systems we rely on to provide order in our society. Implementing restorative practices in schools is a critical way to be an ally to youth. Restorative Practices empower youth to be a part of problem solving and to understand the impacts of their behavior on the school community. In doing so it begins to break down the school to prison pipeline. My hope is that as we continue to promote restorative alternatives for solving disputes between students, teachers, and school administrators, we will continue to support all students growing into empowered, positive, happy adults. Jessica Babcock, DRC Youth Trainer, reflects on her experience co-facilitating the DRC’s first Peaceamker Club at Hansen Elementary School in Olympia. The one-hour after-school clubs are led by trained DRC Facilitators. Students learn communication skills, emotional vocabulary and awareness, conflict resolution techniques, and restoratives practices through circle conversations, games, art, and interactive activities. We all have the potential to learn from one another, no matter the age or rank. This is how I approached working with our first group of 5th graders at Hansen Elementary in the DRC’s afterschool Peacemaker Club. At times, I felt like I was the student (re)learning how to express my emotions or respectfully listen to others, the students, when I didn’t want to discipline them or was frustrated by their behavior. Working with twelve 11 year olds is incredibly rewarding, and it’s also extremely difficult. After school is a time to unwind, recharge with a snack, and let loose. The last thing I wanted to do as a kid after school was to sit in a circle and talk about my problems. But that’s essentially what we did, with some fun stuff too. For an hour after school, 2-3 days/week for 4 weeks, my co-trainer Nick Rawson and I would sit in a circle and talk to these kids. We taught them a talking circle process that allowed them to not only learn about each other in a deeper way but also what to do if a conflict came up, and conflicts did come up.
One afternoon during the talking circle, Nick and I asked the students to describe a difficult time in their lives. Most students described a problem with their parents or running away at the grocery store. But one student described a time when he accidentally broke his dog’s legs. He told the story with some discomfort in his voice, masked as laughter, and as a result the other students started laughing thinking it was a joke. When the student starting crying it became clear it was not a joke. The entire circle was quiet. These kids hadn’t been that silent in the circle, ever! But when one of their own showed genuine emotion they were all engaged and actively listening. After a few minutes of silence each student, in their own way, tried to comfort the boy. Some apologized for laughing, some offered their snack, some acknowledged the hurt. It was a turning point for not only the boy who cried but for everyone to show empathy and truly grow as a group.
There were so many other turning points during the club as it was a challenging four week program. These kids got a crash course in conflict resolution training and did what most adults would shy away from if given the opportunity. A month after the program we met up with the students during lunch on one of their last days of school. They were just as rowdy and loud as the first day we met them, probably excited to be done with school for the summer. You could tell there was a difference in how they interacted with each other. While the silliness and loudness remained, the teasing and meanness did not. They missed the club, mostly the snacks, and they missed us. When asked if they would like to have a Peacemaker Club in Middle School there was a unanimous shout of “YES!” They didn’t specify as to why, but I think it would be safe to say these kids just appreciated someone listening to them about their needs. Nick and I received a card and some chocolate as a ‘thank you’ from the students. One student who showed particular growth wrote, “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn different ways to settle my problems and how to be a good person. It was nice meeting you both!” Providing these kids with a healthy outlet and skillset to talk about their problems is the most beneficial part of us being there. I look forward to future clubs and hope that more schools will consider integrating conflict resolution skills and emotional intelligence into their curriculum or start a club. These are essential life skills that we all need and if they are taught at a young age it can truly help minimize conflict in the future. To the 5th Graders at Hansen Elementary I say; Thank you for teaching me to be patient, silly, and careful with my words. Thank you for teaching me that having a plan is important but knowing when to be flexible is equally as important. Thank you for teaching me to trust in the process. |
AuthorJoe Sanders, Archives
June 2024
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