We're wrapping up the second week of NAFCM's monthlong Diversity & Inclusion Discussion Series. This week's focus encourages us to thoughtfully and constructively examine where the field has yet to achieve its aims of fully embracing diversity in all its measures. Throughout the week, we've entreated the community dispute resolution field to examine diversity from the client, volunteer, and staff/Board member contexts.
I invite you to read this week's entire list of daily discussion prompts (included below the break). Then, share your own thoughts on these topics in the comments below.
In community,
Executive Director, NAFCM
Facilitator: Justin R. Corbett
Topic: Identifying Opportunities for Growth
Intro:
This week's theme for our continuing D+I discussion series is "Identifying Opportunities for Growth." Each day, we will invite you to respectfully challenge any felt sense of exhausted accomplishment, and identify specific areas where we can and, indeed, must make even greater progress toward achieving our high values of diversity and inclusion. We have allotted a day each to categories focusing on volunteers, clients, and staff/Board members. (Of course, we invite these conversations to continue as long as they may be productively sustained.) Utilizing our skills as constructive communicators and with an acceptance of our shared responsibility on this front, we are hopeful this week's discussions will prove productively provocative, deeply honest, and insightfully macrospective.
Discussion Prompts:
Organizations
- As a field, where do you feel we have made the least amount of progress toward institutionalizing diversity and inclusion?
- As an organization within your unique community, what are your greatest challenges in respect to furthering diversity and inclusion?
- How, if at all, does the lack of comprehensive diversity and inclusiveness hamstring your program, our field, and/or our potential?
Individuals
- As a field, where do you feel we have made the least amount of progress toward institutionalizing diversity and inclusion?
- As a practitioner, what would you identify as the most important aspects of diversity and inclusion demanding the field's renewed attention?
- Do you feel your own diversity is adequately represented and welcomed within the broader ADR field? If not, how does this affect you, your perception of our field, and/or your ability/willingness to apply and further your skill sets?
Date: January 24, 2012
Facilitator: Charles Chang
Topic: Opportunities for Growth: Client Diversity
Intro:
When televisions first came out, it was only in black and white. People thought it was the greatest thing. Then eventually, they were broadcast in color and no one would think of watching tv in black and white instead of color because the color gives it so much more richness and vibrancy. Well, in America, it’s not that simple. We are still in a struggle for racial dominance and racial survival. There are people who would like to see all foreigners go back to “their” country. Of course, except for Native Americans, everyone else is a foreigner, but those spreading the hate don’t seem to know their history very well, otherwise they would realize they are calling for themselves to be shipped back to where they came from.
Diversity brings richness like color did for the television, but there is a price because a lot of people are not comfortable with what they don’t know. And that’s what diversity is at the beginning: something they don’t know. That’s one of the reasons mediation can make a big difference in communities. Mediation offers individuals and communities a chance to understand differences whether they are due to race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. I believe that people who are straight can come to accept people who are gay by learning about their struggles. Some people have too much fear to listen, but some people with open hearts can have compassion if not total understanding.
I work for an organization whose mission is predicated on diversity. We have a mission of providing mediation services to the diverse Asian/Pacific Islander (API) population. But we can’t serve the API population without serving everyone else since conflicts aren’t just with other individuals who are API. A few blocks from us is a day laborer center. We have an intake clinic there and take cases from the day laborers. Our peer mediation program has mostly been located in South Los Angeles and we’ve mostly served Latino and African American youth. We’ve built our reputation on serving these youth who are not Asian. Although I wish we served more API youth, I am proud that we can go into a school that is pre-dominantly African American and Latino and be able to propose our program to them without thinking I’m in the wrong place. I am in the right place at the right time and will be able to prove it to them.
I wish everyone could spend a week in my shoes and see the wonder that is Los Angeles. From serving a Korean senior that gives our young Korean mediators a hard time about their case, to the Chinese family that is trying to deal with their debt problems, to the African American family dealing with their housing issues, to the Latino youth that is trying to survive in school by standing up for himself because not fighting would ruin his reputation, we serve diverse populations with the same universal problems: surviving life. If you’d like to see diversity firsthand, you’re welcome to come visit my organization in Los Angeles. I’ll keep a light on for ya’. ;-)
Discussion Prompts:
Organizations
- How has diversity been addressed in your organization?
- How have you worked to ensure diversity among your mediators?
- How have you worked to ensure diversity among your clients?
Date: January 25, 2012
Facilitator: Malcolm D. White
Topic:
Intro:
As a minority professional, my concern is that we are no longer sensitive to the benefits of balanced representation at the table of decision makers when making decisions related to developing access to ADR.
Discussion Prompts:
Organizations
- What is the cultural make-up of your volunteers, paid mediators, and mediation administrators?
- How does your mediation center compare with the diversity of your community?
Individuals
- Doe you feel individuals with English as a second language have the opportunity to grow as professionals in your ADR center?
- Are mediators being recruited, trained, and developed from cultural organizations (e.g. religious or civic groups)?
Date: January 27, 2012
Facilitator: Justin R. Corbett
Topic: Opportunities for Growth: Staff & Board Members
Intro:
Community mediation programs operate on lean (and often overextended) staffing arrangements. In fact, in relation to our overall impact, our entire field employs an impressively productive yet comparatively paltry 1,300 FTE staff members; averaging just three FTE employees per program. Given the modest class size of our professional administrators, the goal of representing the diversity within our broader communities is very challenging. How have we risen to this challenge and in what ways have we yet to achieve our goals on this front?Similarly, how diverse are our programs' Boards of Directors and Advisory groups? Do our Board rooms mirror local diversity in color, calling, culture, and other relevant classifications? Are we governed by the breadth of perspectives shaping our communities and informing our field?
Discussion Prompts:
Organizations
- What do you consider important measures of staff and Board diversity?
- When hiring new staff or recruiting new Board members, how important is diversity in your search?
- Are you confronted with any (local, field-specific, or other) structural impediments to achieving the level of staff/Board diversity you would prefer?
Individuals
- As a staff or Board member, how has your personal diversity been embraced (or under-utilized by your local program?
- Do you feel there are any characteristics of the community mediation field which work against its attainment of greater staff/Board diversity?
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