Neighbors, Organizations, Portland Area Youth—Resolutions Northwest Can Help You Get Along

Your neighbor's dog had been barking incessantly for months. You've never met this newish neighbor and you're reluctant to make your first introduction about a problem you are having with her. It continues for months and months until, in a fit of rage, you yell over the fence, "Shut your dog up already!" Once you've calmed down, you regret this inappropriate, blown-out-of-proportion response, but the damage is done. You guess you'll just have to do your best to avoid her for the rest of your tenure in the neighborhood.

Situations like this arise needlessly all of the time. Otherwise nice, friendly people can sometimes be at a loss when it comes to communicating with their neighbors in a constructive manner. City living requires folks of all walks of life to get along in sometimes cramped quarters. The good news for Portland residents, neighborhood associations, and business owners, is that there is help available—at relatively low or no cost.

Resolutions Northwest is the largest non-profit mediation center in the state. Formed in 1985 as a peer mediation program to be used as an alternative to the traditional juvenile justice model, the organization continues its original work and has added many more programs that offer mediation, education, and training services to families, individuals, businesses, neighborhood associations, coalitions, and non-profit organizations. With a team of volunteers and professional mediators, Resolutions Northwest is teaching Portland residents how to get along.

I sat down with Christina Albo, director of mediation services to learn more. She explains that there are basically four types of services they offer—mediation, facilitation, training, and youth conflict resolution and restorative justice.

Their mediation programs include neighborhood mediation (neighborhood and community, landlord and tenant, consumer and merchant), family mediation (conflicts between youth and family, couples, adult siblings, and concerning the care of elders), and workplace mediation (conflict resolution skills, mediation program development consultation, group mediation and conflict resolution processes, etc.).

Their facilitation program gives community groups, non-profit organizations, and businesses the tools necessary to effectively problem solve, build strong teams, and receive training that will help them communicate effectively and inclusively. Through their contract with the city of Portland, their facilitation services can sometimes be offered for free, or on a sliding scale.

Then there is training—for individuals, community groups, and organization on topics related to conflict resolution. Partially funded through a contract with the City of Portland's Office of Neighborhood Involvement, Resolutions Northwest conducts yearly volunteer mediator and volunteer facilitator training, which in turn helps the organization conduct their facilitation and mediation programs. They also have training workshops for their Juvenile Restorative Justice and Family Mediation Programs.

The basic volunteer mediation training supports their Neighborhood Mediation Program. Each year, they take 20-22 people, though they often receive two to three times that number of applications. It involves participating in a 35 hour basic mediation training followed by 100 hours of service as a community mediator through weekly two-and-a-half hour mentored volunteer shifts. With further training, volunteers can go on to become Restorative Justice or family mediators, or volunteer facilitators. It is a big commitment, but one that is certainly sought after. I had an opportunity to talk with Carrie Jo Stairs, Neighborhood Mediation Program Coordinator, and some of the volunteers about what this program means to them, and what they have gotten out of the experience.

Across the board, they all agreed that the lessons they've learned through this mentorship have carried through to their personal lives, from the way they deal with conflicts to their ability to feel empathy for the struggles others face.

"It really struck me how much smaller the city became," one volunteer told me. "Someone might live less than a mile away from me but have such a different life experience than mine."

"We ourselves have the opportunity to learn what it really means to be a good neighbor," another volunteer offers. "We see a wide array of people in all sorts of situations—it was an eye-opening experience for me that these types of issues were going on all around me."

"With a little training, I learned about a whole new way the world can operate," another volunteer shared. "We learn how to approach challenges with compassion—to be supportive and effective in helping people to move forward. The lessons about communication we learn here are reproducible in many situations."

The volunteers explained to me the role they play in the process. What they practice is called Case Development, and it starts with a phone conversation with the individual or group seeking some support.

"Sometimes that is all that they need—a chance to feel heard, a sense of hope that things can be worked out," a volunteer explains. "It's amazing what can happen with a little help. It lessens the pressure on all parties." If the issues cannot be resolved quite so quickly, a face-to-face mediation may be set up with a staff mediator.

Carrie Jo Stairs offers her personal experience with Resolutions Northwest, where she herself started as a volunteer.

"The underlying reason I wanted to work here was that I needed to bridge the space between my values and my skills. They didn't match up, and I didn't know how to grow that on my own—I needed a community," Stairs explains.

Youth Conflict Resolution and Juvenile Restorative Justice

The fourth service that Resolutions Northwest offers deals with youth conflict. The original focus of Resolutions Northwest was to help kids deal with conflict constructively, and develop coping skills they would carry with them into adulthood. Working with both school staff and training peer mediators, the conflict resolution program's success and popularity has led to the formation of an Oregon Peacemakers Conference for middle and high school students. Typically attended by 400 middle school and high school students from around Oregon and Southwest Washington, the conference was cancelled this year—a victim of funding cuts—but Resolutions Northwest is determined to reinstate it before the organizations 15 year anniversary next year.

Part of Resolutions Northwest's programs for youth is the new Juvenile Restorative Justice Program. Restorative Justice in Schools is a pilot program for Resolutions Northwest, being conducted in the Parkrose School district. It takes Resolutions Northwest's Youth Conflict Resolution programs into middle and high school, hopeful that a new disciplinary process will reduce the number of expulsions and suspensions, and ultimately lower the drop-out rate.

Restorative Justice is a philosophy whereby an offender is encouraged to take responsibility for his or her actions, instead of using isolation from the community (expulsion, detention centers) as a punishment.

"These exclusionary practices are more likely to lead to more offenses. We look to create disciplinary actions that hold the offenders accountable in meaningful ways to each individual. We aim to show them how their actions affect their victims, their families and ultimately themselves."

Through Restorative Justice in Schools, Resolutions Northwest offers meetings between youth offenders and their victims, called Victim Offender Meetings (VOM). It seeks to explain what it is to do something that cannot be undone, and that they have a responsibility to repair, wherever possible, the damage they've done. Funding cuts have suspended VOMs, but Albo hopes that it will be reinstated soon.
Another piece of Restorative Justice in Schools is the Youth Impact Service, helping to empower young people to participate in their rehabilitation and reparations, even if meeting their victim is not possible (or if the victim is not interested in such a meeting).

"Through collaboration between the school district, Multnomah [County Department of Community Justice] Juvenile Division, and Resolutions Northwest, we complement the disciplinary system though our alternate processes," Albo explains. She tells me that they received a lot of buy-in from the staff, "Everyone was on board to try this. School readiness is crucial."

She explains that Portland Public Schools is beginning to look at implementing a new "positive behavior reinforcement" program, and hopes that that will create an opportunity for Resolutions Northwest to support the district's endeavors.

"There is an overrepresentation of minorities in the current school justice system," Albo explains. "We strive to create culturally appropriate programs, and to offer translation services." She hopes that these skills may position them as a valuable resource to Portland Public Schools in the future.

Resolutions Northwest is ambitious in the scope of services they offer, and their track record proves that they have the skill to back it up.
"We're here to problem solve," Albo says, "but also to develop skills so people can in turn solve problems on their own. Every year, we also create 20 new people [through their volunteer mediation mentorship program] who are really good at conflict resolution." Many of those people stay on to become mediators and facilitators.

"We're always looking for ways to do more," she admits. She and the others I've met at Resolutions Northwest, seem up to the challenge.