ICAR's Applied Practice and Theory Program (APT) Awarded $92,000

By Surdna Foundation

With a Surdna Foundation award of $92,000, ICAR's Applied Practice and Theory Program (APT) expanded its work at several area sites, more than tripling its on-the-ground program activity during 1996-1997. Surdna funding and support made possible the hiring of two new faculty and the assignment of a graduate research assistant to each of the three local area APT Teams. With this expanded work force, the APT Teams built on previous activity in their respective communities and initiated a number of new projects.

Rewards of this expansion were the APT Program's ability to exceed its earlier commitments to deliver conflict resolution services at selected sites and to advance ICAR's academic and theoretical work. The Surdna Foundation's grant has additional value in that it will provide opportunities to publish and to enrich ICAR's Conflict Curriculum and theoretical models. APT Governance Team Leader Professor Wallace Warfield's recently published article, "Building Consensus for Racial Harmony in American Cities: A Case Model Approach" in The Journal of Dispute Resolution, analyzes response to a troubling community crisis; the article parallels some aspects of his APT Team's experience in Arlington County, Virginia.

The APT Project

Since 1993 ICAR has maintained three Applied Practice and Theory Project Teams: the APT Divided Societies Team, active in inner-city Washington, D.C.; the APT Governance Team, working with the Arlington County, Virginia, Department of Parks and Recreation; and the APT Racial and Ethnic Conflict in Schools Team (formerly Identity and Conflict Team), conducting a range of projects and trainings in Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., metropolitan area schools and their local communities.

This year, with partial support from the Surdna grant, ICAR's APT Teams brought on board Clinical Professor Dr. Sandra I. Cheldelin, Coordinator of ICAR's Divided Societies Team, and Professor Marsha Blakeway, Coordinator of ICAR's Racial and Ethnic Conflict in Schools Team (Professor Blakeway serves during Professor Frank Blechman's absence on sabbatical); additionally, each team and its community was assigned an ICAR graduate research assistant. Professor Wallace Warfield continued to serve as Coordinator of ICAR's Governance Team.

APT Teams Meet 1996-1997 Goals

The APT Divided Societies Team expanded its presence and added new projects in Washington, D.C.'s Mt. Pleasant district. Expanding from four to seven, its new members are faculty advisor and team coordinator Dr. Sandra Cheldelin; graduate research assistant Nike Carstarphen; ICAR doctoral students Davin Bremner and John Windmueller; and master's students Maile Beers, Anthony Kargbo, and Barry MacMillan. During summer and fall 1996, the team met weekly to create a cohesive and productive working group and expand its knowledge of community agencies, organizations, and service providers in its Washington, D.C., neighborhood.

Community Services and Conflict Resolution Trainings. Working collaboratively with the Mt. Pleasant Advisory Neighborhood Commission's Sub-Committee on Housing and Economic Development, the team convened community-wide meetings focused on local economic development models and opportunities. The team conducted and participated in a series of Conflict Resolution Workshops for groups of homeless and adult women at a neighborhood service organization, Martha's Table, and conducted a "Mini-Training on Anger Management and Conflict Resolution" for GED students at the Academy of Hope.

Strategic Decision Making. In November 1996 the team refocused its efforts primarily on the District's youth and began to develop linkages with agencies concerned with children and young adults of the greater Mt. Pleasant District. The team designed a new initiative in collaboration with Janet Murdock of the local Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) to offer a series of after-school conflict workshops for Latino youth; topics covered included Mediation; Conflict and Me; Culture and Violence; and How Do We Help People Solve Problems? The team is now developing a Conflict Resolution Manual which includes lesson plans and an evaluation model to assess the team's work with LAYC, in this and in future years.

In January 1997, in collaboration with Ms. Sandra Dang, Director of Washington's Indochinese Community Center (ICC), the team developed a formal proposal to provide a Conflict Resolution Training Program for youths participating in ICC's Youth Leadership Project in spring 1997. The team conducted a "Training of Trainers Program" for ICC youth and staff and integrated this training into a broader training and dialogue project with other youth groups in the Mt. Pleasant, Adams Morgan, and Columbia Heights sections of the District of Columbia.

Meeting the Community's Perceived Needs. Efforts of community leaders advocating on behalf of others to build bridges between people in their communities are greatly enhanced by their ability to understand the root causes of conflicts and violence and their development of skills in communicating how to resolve perceived differences. Using ICAR's Conflict Resolution Training Methodology which teaches these skills, the team is offering training to the community on: Attitudes and Approaches to Conflict; Interpersonal Communication Skills; Collaborative Problem Solving; Conflict Intervention and Mediation; and Violence Prevention.

The Community Service School Project. The team has joined a Working Group which is convening leaders of the District's grass-roots community organizations, service provider agencies, schools, universities, and concerned parents, youth, and local residents in Columbia Heights and Mt. Pleasant to create an after-school and Saturday program a Community Service School. This school will be a hub which will enable the community to expand job skills and provide academic and recreational opportunities to neighborhood youth and adults. The Working Group conducted a needs assessment and held several community-wide meetings throughout the fall; it is now working with the Bruce-Monroe Elementary School to locate the school in its neighborhood. Target date for opening is summer 1997.

Future Directions. Expanding geographical "boundaries," as the team has already begun to do, will be continued; the Mt. Pleasant area's overlapping neighborhoods are very much involved with the divisions and splits in the greater metropolitan district. While community organizations and service providers serving on the Working Group American Friends Service Committee, D.C. Peace and Economic Justice Program, Capital Area Community Food Bank, Community First, Empower America Services, Inc., Good Shepherd, Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, Jubilee Jobs, Latin American Youth Center, Latin Economic Development Corporation, Sojourners Neighborhood Centerare diverse, all have common goals; expanding and integrating additional neighborhood resource providers into this network is an additional future goal.

The APT Governance Team. APT Governance Team members: faculty coordinator Professor Wallace Warfield; graduate research assistant Marlett Phillips; doctoral students Sharon MacDonald, Giselle Huamani Ober, Linda Johnston; master's students Tracy Breneman, Deirdre Gallagher, Pat Tallarico, Warren Prescott; adjunct student from George Mason's Department of Public and International Affairs, Lee Briggs.

The Team's Goals. The team is assisting the Arlington County Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Resources ("Parks & Rec") in designing a Conflict Prevention and Resolution Training Program to be implemented with identified populations at designated county recreational sites. In 1996 the team provided Conflict Resolution Tools and Clinical Skills Training to Parks & Rec's staff development program to prepare staff to respond to conflicts preventatively rather than on a reactive basis. While continuing its active engagement with Parks & Rec, due to a reorganization taking place throughout Parks & Rec's system, the team has put site or staff-specific training planned for fall 1996 on hold. Because area managers are being transferred or replaced, and field staff shifted as well, training is on hold until the reorganization is completed.

Anticipated Emergent Conflict. The team's monitoring of community dynamics during the reorganization shows that the department has received mixed reviews in affected communities, in part due to negative reaction to field management shifts which have raised community fears that the reorganization will result in the elimination or downsizing of favored programs. Parks & Rec, with the aid of the team, is working proactively to avoid potentially disruptive conflict with diverse community populations across the county.

Working With Parks & Rec's Upper Management. In winter 1997 the team met with Parks & Rec's upper management and with area managers newly in place at four recreational sites, to aid in restructuring Parks & Rec's Policies and Procedures in order to make them congruent with conflict dynamics emerging in the field pursuant to the reorganization. Pairing up with Parks & Rec's four new area managers, it conducted activities which include: 1) designing collaborative approaches to Parks & Rec Policy and Procedures through facilitated dialogue; 2) assisting area managers in facilitating dialogues with community residents to avoid the "Solomon's Trap" of decide-announce-defend, which tends to escalate conflict rather than resolve or mitigate it; 3) conflict prevention by familiarizing Parks & Rec Staff with the spiral of unmanaged conflict, indicating how conflict intervention can be used at various stages and, more importantly, underscoring the value of conflict prevention; 4) designing Parks & Rec User Survey Instruments that staff will use to evaluate current levels of user receptivity to Parks & Rec programs.

Intercultural Cooperation: The Nauck Community. The team is designing conflict resolution approaches to reduce conflict and promote intercultural cooperation in South Arlington's Nauck Community (one of the four sites mentioned above). It will assist the area manager in spring 1997 to conduct a user survey of diverse community residents to aid staff in reducing cross-cultural competition and divisiveness among facilities users and expand opportunities for cross-cultural cooperation.

Racial and Ethnic Conflict in Schools Team

The Racial and Ethnic Conflict in Schools APT Team members: faculty coordinator Professor Marsha S. Blakeway; graduate research assistant Mara L. Schoeny; doctoral students Robert Harris, Craig Zelizer; master's students Kris Butler Mejia, Laura Marshall, Karen Stapleton.

The Team's Mapping Project. During fall 1996 the team interviewed school, government and juvenile justice officials, community activists and others in the District of Columbia, Prince George's County and Montgomery County, Maryland, and in Fairfax, Arlington, and Loudoun counties and the city of Alexandria, Virginia, to develop information on sources of youth violence, use of intervention methods and local alternatives, and the existence of communication links between groups. The team drafted analyses linking its findings to relevant theories in the field of Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Contact information was used to develop a database and a directory of regional contacts and resources.

The team is now preparing a resource paper discussing relevant theories and their application to intervention strategies in addition to a networking directory for school and community leaders to promote increased communication between the major public and private parties and agencies in the region.

APT Teams Fall 1997 Conference. In fall 1997 the team, working in collaboration with the Divided Societies and Governance Teams, will conduct the Institute's Annual 1997 Conference, "Youth Violence: Integrating Community Approaches." The teams have convened an innovative pre-conference planning group which brings area youth together with local educators and representatives of grass-roots organizations, law enforcement, and local government agencies, for a series of monthly roundtable sessions leading up to the conference. The goal of this process is to create a lasting network of people who will seek ongoing ways to link and integrate efforts to address youth violence. At the first pre-conference roundtable, held in Washington, D.C., participants enthusiastically expressed support for the project's goals and objectives, engaged in a broad discussion of youth violence, how it is presented in the media, and ways that schools and communities can collaborate to address the problem. Upcoming sessions will focus on: Mapping Our Communities Challenges and Resources; Sources of Youth Violence; and Intervention Strategies Integrated vs. Single-Track. The information generated from these discussions will be integrated into the final preparations for ICAR's Fall 1997 Conference.

Falls Church, Va., Community Coalition. The team is collaborating with Fairfax County Public Schools' "Safe and Drug Free Schools Program" to help develop a Falls Church Schools/Community Coalition. Fairfax County's school system is divided into three areas. Each has a pyramid consisting of a high school, an associated middle school, and a number of linked elementary schools; while some have successfully developed and implemented School/Community Coalitions, others have encountered difficulties in establishing a program. In December 1996 team members met with representatives of the County Schools Administration and attended its Coalition-Building Workshops to define areas in which the team could potentially be of assistance. The team is now working with the Falls Church Pyramid to develop and maintain a coalition, assessing its previous efforts and the experience of other coalitions which might provide a basis to launch the Falls Church program. Team members are meeting with local leadership to facilitate organization of the coalition structure with an emphasis on developing strategies for youth participation.

Youth/Gang Dialogues. The team developed a successful series of dialogues between Fairfax County Police and youth with previous or current ties to gangs or gang activities and has expanded the dialogue format to include potential dialogues between gang-involved youth as well as between non-gang-involved and gang-involved youth. The team is now determining how to select youth participants and develop appropriate methods to ensure the safety of participants and facilitators. The dialogue project presented unanticipated logistical challenges resulting from a need for increased security based upon gang members' participation in the project. To meet safety and voluntary participation issues, which are complicated outside a framework involving police, the team is incorporating probation officers and community leaders into the dialogues. It will continue to build additional community and institutional relationships in order to expand this project in the future. The dialogues have reinforced collaborative strategies to address youth violence and demonstrated ICAR's importance as a community resource in this process.

Involving Youth in Conflict Resolution. The Schools Team has integrated the involvement of young people in its projects, particularly in its pre-conference round-tables, so that youth may partner with adults to address issues of common concern. Their participation in this process reinforces the team's commitment to talking "with" youth rather than "about" them and helps establish and enhance youth's role as partners with adults in crafting solutions.