Happy Holidays from SEEDS

Dear Friend,

This year's economic downturn has presented many opportunities for SEEDS Community Resolution Center to contribute to the greater well-being of Alameda County residents. With an uncertain economic and global environment come increased conflict and tension. You or someone close to you may have experienced conflict or been involved in a complicated dispute recently. SEEDS is here to help, providing affordable community and court mediation, support, and conflict skills training. In 2009, SEEDS served more than 2300 clients, guiding each client to a more peaceful way of resolving disagreements.


SEEDS Community Resolution Center is firmly rooted in helping to meet the needs of people in conflict and distress in Alameda County. SEEDS services encourage effective dialogue and foster solutions to a wide range of issues that arise in our communities, from reducing violence in our schools, to resolving complex workplace conflicts, to helping neighbors resolve a disagreement.


I would like to share some of our strategic plan and vision for 2010 and ask for your financial support so SEEDS can continue to seek out and seize opportunities to facilitate peaceful resolutions in Alameda County.


One of the primary themes of our 2010 strategic plan is to significantly expand the level of programs and services that integrate restorative principles and practices. Restorative Justice is a natural extension of our conflict resolution services in cultivating common ground among victims, offenders, families and community members. We've made great strides towards this objective by securing a grant from the Safeway Foundation to underwrite the training of a group of 15-20 volunteers in the Restorative Justice methodology in early 2010.


With trained Restorative Justice practitioners in place, SEEDS will take on additional cases for the restitution circle program we are piloting at the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center. SEEDS has already been approached by several other court partners and community based organizations to start pilot programs with them as well!


Our 2010 strategic plan also includes a goal to increase the number of our community mediations and conflict resolution skills training services. SEEDS has strong partnerships with courts, schools, and other community-based agencies to deliver much needed services to their constituencies. SEEDS is currently working with Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) to resolve conflicts among faculty and staff as well as to train them to diffuse and prevent future conflict. We provided faculty and staff with a two-day Conflict Resolution Skills Workshop in early 2009 and currently have volunteer mediators working in the schools with teachers and students on constructive dialogue practices and peaceful conflict resolution. SEEDS has been asked to continue this collaboration with OUSD in 2010 and will continue to provide training, mediation, and integrative restorative practices in the schools.


To realize our strategic plan and its positive impact in our community, SEEDS needs your support today.


Your support will allow us to include Restorative Justice methodologies in our menu of conflict resolution services.

Your support will allow us to deliver more conflict resolution skills trainings to under-served communities in Alameda County.

Your support will allow us to train additional mediators to tackle difficult issues in our community, such as youth violence, racial tension, custody disputes and landlord/tenant issues.

Your support will allow us to improve the quality of our services by providing complimentary training and seminars for our volunteer mediators, coaches, and trainers.

Your support allows us to offer all of our services on a sliding scale, so that no one is turned away for inability to pay.


With your support, SEEDS can continue to cultivate common ground and sow peace in homes, neighborhoods and schools throughout Alameda County.


Please make a donation today in the envelope provided or by credit card on our website at

www.seedscrc.org/support.php.


Thank you and Happy New Year!


Sincerely,


SEEDS Staff


Peace cannot be achieved through violence – it can only be attained through understanding

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

October 15th photos up!

We've posted photos and a narrative from our October 15th Cultivating Common Ground event on our website: http://www.seedscrc.org/past-events.php

Wicked & Effective Influence

Nettie Pardue, Training & Facilitation Program Manager at the SEEDS Community Resolution Center

I attended Effective Influence in 2008. A few weeks ago, I found myself musing about Effective Influence as I entered the Land of Oz, in a packed Orpheum theater in San Francisco. I was going to spend an evening revisiting one of my favorite childhood movies from a different angle. From what I knew about this production going in, it was supposed to provide me with the Wicked Witch's perspective.

But why on earth would I want to understand the wicked witch? What would she have to teach me? Margaret Hamilton, the original wicked witch will always be the epitome of mean, nasty and scary to me. Child-me was always terrified of the Wicked Witch and wondered how someone could be that mean or that evil. So as I filed in with teenage girls dressed as if for prom, couples on dates, folks with silver hair or no hair a myriad of shapes, sizes and colors packed that auditorium but I was thinking about the Witches.

Most people know about Glenda the Good Witch. For the record, the wicked witch had a name too: Elphaba. Somehow it seemed significant that, though I'd watched the Wizard of Oz countless times, I didn't know her name. The adult mediator in me was startled to realize that I knew this Elphaba person only from her role as Wicked Witch; I knew nothing about who she was, what drove her, what she needed, what we might have in common. Did she have children? Get excited about accounting law? Vote the way that I would vote? Excel at persuading the flying monkeys not to make a mess of the FAA's traffic routes?

Thinking about this, I realized that, while I did know something about the personal side of Dorothy and her friends, I knew no more about the human side of Glenda than I did about the human side of Elphaba. When she appears in the film, she does so in a heavily produced, larger-than-life bubble... but, is she married? (Yes.) What does her husband do? (A derivatives trader.) Could I hire him? (No.) What schmear does she like best on her bagels if I am bringing them to a team meeting? Does she keep pugs or labradoodles? Maybe Glenda has an aging parent waiting impatiently offstage for the spectacle to end so that they could watch Larry King... or made her late and so prevented her from magicking Dorothy's house to a safe landing before it killed Elphaba's sister? After all, Glenda arrives just a little too late. Might she not have put the ruby red slippers onto her own feet if she wasn't aiming to get Dorothy in trouble? Was she secretly annoyed by how Dorothy presented herself as powerless, and gave her the slippers to make a point?

You'd only know if someone asked.

Wicked showcases the idea of understanding the other and not jumping to conclusions about each other's backgrounds, stories or histories. By remaining curious and asking, we can do this. Wicked also suggests how lack of understanding and making false assumptions can lead to hurt feelings and unforeseen consequences. If Elphaba had really listened to her sister instead of trying only to protect the people around her from her follies, might her sister not have been so embittered?

>> When people behave inexplicably or meanly or contrary to your wishes, get curious. Go with the part of you that is saying, Huh? and ask them what's up, instead of acquiescing to the part that thinks it has the other already figured out.

>> Connections make for productive teams and colleagues who open doors for you, sometimes especially because you bring a uniquely different point of view. People remember authentic moments of connection as well or better than moments of disconnection.

>> Disputes in which only the answer matters (i.e. who wins or loses) often corrode relationships: no one likes to feel as if, each time a dispute comes up, you want them to lose. Remember that the person and how they feel actually matters, too.

Sitting in that theater among teenage girls dressed as if for prom, couples on dates, folks with silver hair or no hair, people in a myriad of shapes, sizes and colors, I decided that the green-faced Elphaba should be my reminder to always consider the other person's story. She can remind me to consider what I think that I know, and how, and from what source. Elphaba will maintain my curiosity, cause me to ask questions... and seek empathy, not when I agree but especially when I don't. I'm not perfect, but that good witch Glenda, she had her flaws, too. I am no so certain that she deserves that title Good Witch anymore.

But she could just be Glenda.