Mediation Center Trains New Volunteers
Mid-Shore Community Mediation Center’s Basic Mediation Training participants. Standing, from left: Trainees Donna Harrison, Craig Sewell, Alex Willis, George Borowsky, Tamra Gardiner, Sue Ann Kruger, Riley Walter and Sara Blades; assistant trainer Tracy Ford. Middle row: Trainees Jennifer Williams, Kason Washington, Karen Shook, Ray Grossman and Jennifer Fisher; trainer Errika Bridgeford and
trainee
Ragan Jones. Front: Trainee Anitra Dear.
Mid Shore Community Mediation Center (MSCMC) has fourteen new mediators eager to help the organization peacefully resolve conflicts in the Caroline, Dorchester and Talbot County communities it serves. The adult and teen volunteers recently completed an intensive 45-hour basic mediation training program, conducted by professional trainers from Community Mediation Maryland.
“This was an exceptional class for talent, enthusiasm, teamwork and community spirit,” said Peter Taillie, the Mediation Center’s Executive Director. He emphasized that the goal is to maintain the engagement of these new volunteers on an ongoing basis. Initially, that will take the form of an apprenticeship, where the recruits will observe experienced mediators in action.
That additional training before being responsible for their own mediations is welcome to many of the trainees. Ray Grossman admits to needing more practice. Human Resources Director for Shore Health System, living in Cambridge, Grossman was accustomed to mediating situations among employees. However, he found the community mediation model used by MSCMC not quite the same.
While he said he had often made recommendations or imposed compromises when employees with disagreements came to him in his work, the Mediation Center’s volunteers are taught to remain neutral and allow the parties themselves to come up with a solution acceptable to all. “You can’t recommend anything,” Grossman explained, “and that will be hard for me.”
Retired restaurant owner and current CASA volunteer, Sara Blades, from Greensboro, feels more prepared to mediate, but also appreciates the opportunity to observe for a time. “We were given enough knowledge and tools that I feel like I could mediate now, but I want to have more confidence in myself first,” she said, commending the thoroughness of the intense training program.
The basic training takes place over three weekends, and Grossman warned that it is “grueling,” and may be especially draining for those with full-time weekday jobs. It takes a commitment that Taillie is quick to applaud in the volunteers. In comparing it to her CASA training, Blades appreciated that extending the training over several weeks allows trainees to digest the material presented before coming back for the next weekend’s sessions.
Mediators are trained through role play to listen to the individual parties to the conflict and then reflect the concerns they have heard back to them. This promotes understanding of the issues involved and appreciation that everyone is being heard.
Karen Shook of St. Michaels was a producer and reporter in Washington, DC, before moving to the Eastern Shore with her husband, Langley, President of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. “I thought I was a good listener, but this is different from listening as an interviewer or journalist,” she said. She expects the volunteer work to be a good fit for her and an opportunity for personal growth.
A common reaction among the graduates was admiration for the trainers, primarily Community Mediation Maryland’s Errika Bridgeford. “She is a phenomenal trainer,” said Easton’s Tamra Gardiner, Residential Director at the Chesapeake Center. “I don’t know how she kept up the energy. It made it so much easier than it otherwise would have been.”
With the Mediation Center offering a wide variety of no-cost mediation services to the community, and demand for those services growing each year, the new mediators will be able to offer their skills in situations ranging from neighbor disputes to large group facilitations.
Some look forward to working with specific types of mediation, like Gardiner who, having experienced mediation in her own divorce, hopes to help others work out less adversarial endings to marriages. Blades says that children are her passion and would like to facilitate Individual Education Programs for special needs students and their families. Grossman and Shook are happy to observe for a while and see where they best fit.
Several of the new mediators are teenagers. While trained in all the same skills as the adult volunteers, teen mediators are especially important in teen/teen and parent/teen mediations, where the presence of a peer mediator ensures the younger parties feel they are being heard.
Gardiner described herself as humbled by the different backgrounds and generosity of those participating in the training. “None of them were taking the class to hang out a shingle and get rich by being a mediator,” she said. Noting that some wanted to be better at their jobs or to aid their work with other nonprofits, like many of the others, she simply is excited about being able to help someone and give back to the community. “I feel like I am in a really special group of people,” she added.
For more information on mediation, to make a contribution, or to volunteer as a mediator, call Mid Shore Community Mediation Center at 410-820-5553 or visit www.midshoremediation.org.
