February 3, 2012

D+I Week 3: Resources to Equip Our Commitment

The third week of NAFCM's Diversity + Inclusion Discussion Series is now a wrap. This week's theme: "Resources to Equip Our Commitment" was focused on ensuring our principled aims are supported by accessible resources, insightful research, and local connections. Toward that end, our Series facilitators posted a range of interesting discussion prompts and compiled an initial set of helpful resources. Review the complete list of daily discussion prompts (below the break) and recommend additional adr-related diversity resources in the comments below.

This week also saw the release of NAFCM's Survey on Diversity + Inclusion within Community Mediation. This Survey is an ambitious, first-of-its-kind undertaking to purposefully and methodically collect information on how community mediation programs envision, engage, and excel in diversity and inclusion practices at the local level. To further inform and engender continued dialogue, results from this Survey will be compiled into a report from NAFCM's D+I Working Group and shared with the broader field.

In community,
Executive Director, NAFCM


Date: January 30, 2012
Facilitator: Justin R. Corbett
Topic: D+I Survey & Resources to Enhance Diversity

Intro:

Welcome to the third week of our shared conversation on diversity and inclusion within community mediation! Our first week celebrated our progress, the second: opportunities for continued growth. This week, we are seeking to equip you for the important work ahead. Beyond the broad conceptual endorsement of D+I within our ranks, there remains the tangible need for specific tools to help us holistically, methodically, and purposefully actualize our aims. Throughout the ensuing week, we invite you to share and discuss specific resources, research, tips, and experiences which can inform and enhance our diversity and inclusion practices. Some of the resources we'll discuss will be directed toward community mediation and/or the broader ADR field. Most, however, will draw wisdom from more expansive fields of practice such as the nonprofit, public administration, and other aligned realms. Through your contributions over the following week, we hope to amass a wide collection of diversity and inclusion-related resources. Once collected, we will host the aggregated resources on the D+I Working Group's forthcoming web page. 
Introducing the week's first such resource, NAFCM is pleased to release its SURVEY ON DIVERSITY + INCLUSION WITHIN COMMUNITY MEDIATION. This Survey, designed for program administrators, seeks to inform a more nuanced understanding of how we envision, engage, and execute the complex issues of culture, diversity, and inclusion. I strongly encourage all community mediation programs to complete this survey! In appreciation for completing the Survey, NAFCM will provide responding member programs with a personalized report on how their responses compare both to our larger network, as well as to recent U.S. Census data from their own specific communities. These personalized reports will help programs better understand and promote their progress toward embracing diversity and inclusion. 
(In releasing this Survey, I readily and humbly acknowledge the impossibility of roundly quantifying culture or counting all that which truly counts. Still, the broad information gathered through this Survey can help further inform and motivate deeper examinations of self and service within our wonderfully complex communities. After completing the survey, I welcome recommendations on how this resource may be improved and/or supplemented for future uses.)

Discussion Prompts:

Organizations
  1. Please complete the Survey on Diversity + Inclusion within Community Mediation. 
  2. What resources and/or research would be most helpful as you continually invest in your D+I efforts? 
Individuals
  1. As a volunteer or Board member, what specific D+I-related resources would further your capacity to serve your clients and/or your organization (e.g. additional training, readings, support/discussion groups, etc.)?
  2. Beyond our field, what other professional practice areas do you feel serve as strong examples of D+I advocacy? What specifically do they do to warrant exception?

Date: January 31, 2012
Facilitator: Malcolm White
Topic: D+I Resources

Intro:

As an organization or a member of a local Board of Directors, where do you go to research issues of Diversity and Inclusion (D+I) in the field of ADR? With the advancements of technology, we all have new available information at our finger tips. Because D+I may now be a fresh topic for the new administrators in the field where do you go to gather the data or articles' to share with others?

Discussion Prompts:

Organizations 
  1. What are your go-to resources for D+I?
Individuals
  1. Consider attending the National Conference for Minority Professionals in Alternative Dispute Resolution at Capital University (Columbus, OH) on May 14-16, 2012.

Date: February 01, 2012
Facilitator: Clay Fong
Topic: Tapping into Local Resources

Intro:

Local organizations and people have been some of the most useful resources for the City of Boulder's Community Mediation Service in addressing inclusion and diversity needs. As a municipal agency, we have brought in staff and volunteers from other departments to assist with cases and strategizing around broader outreach and case-specific strategy development. We work closely with our municipal Office of Human Rights (we've built mediation into local ordinances regarding discrimination and wage theft), the police department's community affairs division (in particular, the Latino Community Liaision), and the city's volunteer Human Relations Commission - Commissioners have volunteered on cases for us, as have court translators. 
We've also drawn on local affinity organizations such as the Boulder Asian Pacific Alliance and Intercambio (focusing on cross-cultural exchange through language working mostly with Spanish-speaking folks - they have also created an immigrant resource guide distributed nationally and translated into several languages). The Anti-Defamation League has been an ally in our school work, particularly with their "No place for hate" initiative. Staff will also use events such as cultural festivals, fundraisers, the annual MLK celebration, school events for students of color, and the county diversity awards dinner as venues for outreach and recruitment.

Discussion Prompts:

Organizations & Individuals
  1. Who are current volunteers and staffers who can reach out to organizational and individual allies?
  2. What are the agencies, non-profits, and other local groups that can be allies in your D & I efforts?
  3. Are there events that you can use as recruiting and resource opportunities?

Date: February 02, 2012
Facilitator: Charles Chang
Topic: D+I Resources

Intro:

Because resources are so scarce, I find that each resource is a precious commodity. To give a little backdrop on my organization, we are funded by Los Angeles County and we have goals that we have to meet. The main goal is the number of cases we resolve each year. Our secondary goal is to particularly help clients who speak an Asian/Pacific Islander language in our community program. Our youth program doesn’t have the ethnic/racial requirement. 
So in order to make this happen, we need funding of course, but aside from that, the other two precious commodities are volunteers (who speak various Asian languages as well as English and Spanish) and referral institutions. The volunteers help us resolve the cases and the referral institutions bring us clients. For the volunteers, we mostly work with universities (clubs, career center, classes, job/intern fairs). For the referral institutions, we build relationships with non-profits, churches, government agencies, police departments, chambers of commerce). We have found that the greatest source of clients are from intake clinics. If there is an organization that has good foot traffic for its programs, we will piggy-back off of them and put a table where the foot traffic is and spend two to three hours one day out of the week doing intakes. Currently we do this at a church, a nonprofit organization’s health clinic, and at a day laborer center. We make sure to have a volunteer who speaks the appropriate language for that location. In the past we’ve also trained staff or volunteers at a nonprofit organization and church to be mediators and overseen their mediation program. This is the best because we can have a steady program somewhere with language capacity built in and we also take credit for the resolved cases. These organizations are like satellite offices. The only challenge is that the program and staff/volunteer is ultimately controlled by the organization and they can pull the plug whenever they want.

Date: February 03, 2012
Facilitator: Justin R. Corbett
Topic: D+I Resource Quick Clicks

Intro:

The importance of thoughtful, purposeful efforts toward enhancing diversity and inclusion within our field is roundly acknowledged. Knowing which resources will help us progress along that path, however, is unfortunately not as obvious. Below are a few important resources to get you plugged-in to the key thinking, relevant research, and helpful tools to advance your own D+I agenda. Starting with these links, I encourage you to dig deeper and discover even more tools that affirm our commitment, challenge our practices, and continue our collective leadership on diversity and inclusion within ADR and our broader communities. As you discover more, please share additional helpful resources with the group. 
Research/Readings 
Websites/Miscellaneous

Discussion Prompts:

Organizations & Individuals
  1. What are your go-to resources for D+I?
  2. What types of resources would you like to see included on NAFCM's forthcoming D+I Working Group webpage?
RECOMMEND YOUR OWN RESOURCES FOR ADR DIVERSITY IN THE COMMENTS!  
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