Expanding ICAR's APT Project

Funded with a major grant of $92,000 by the Surdna Foundation's Program for Effective Citizenry in June 1996, ICAR's Applied Theory and Practice Program (APT) Teams have expanded their operations in three major areas.

The APT "Schools" Team

The APT Schools Team under the direction of Professor Frank Blechman, conducted policc-youth dialogues in spring 1996, bringing youth who are active in gangs and hostile to the police into a non confrontational dialogue about why each party behaves as it does. Gradually, each group came to understand the "rules" under which each operates-the rules of police procedure and the rules of the street. The dialogues reduced tension between the two, improving the environment for everyone in the Fairfax community. An article describing the dialogue process is now being prepared for publication.

The APT Schools Team also helped design and conduct a community meeting for parents concerned about youth violence in another area of Fairfax County. The meeting, conducted simultaneously in Vietnamese, English, and Spanish, introduced parents to issues surrounding gangs and school discipline and the role that facilitated mediation can play in helping parents and youth deal with both.

The Schools Team also developed a curriculum on conflict resolution for use in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes in a local Northern Virginia high school. The curriculum integrated conflict-resolving skills and processes into a series of multicultural discussions about the cultural barriers that students coming from outside the United States confront when working with a standard model of mediation. The team's recommendations for modification of the school's Peer Mediation Program were written up in English as language building exercises and the information has been used to modify the school's peer mediation practices.

In May 1996, ICAR hosted more than 1,450 students, teachers, and parents at the Fourth Annual Conference on Peer Mediation in Schools. Produced in conjunction with the Fairfax County Public Schools Office of Conflict Resolution Services and the Fairfax County Police, the event featured Robin Delaney-Shabazz, of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Delaney-Shabazz is the coordinator a joint project of the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education related to peer mediation in the schools.

The Arlington APT "Governance" Team

Under the direction of Professor Wallace Warfield, the Arlington APT Team is assisting the Arlington County Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Resources to design and implement a Conflict Prevention and Resolution Training Program, which win be implemented with identified populations at designated recreational sites.

The team is also developing tools and clinical skills to respond to conflicts preventatively rather than on a reactive basis. In the spring and summer of 1996, in two separate sessions, faculty and graduate student members of the Arlington APT Team provided Conflict Resolution Training to selected Parks and Recreation Center managers, field monitors, and park rangers to increase their awareness of conflict indicators and build skills in initiating preventative measures against escalation. Using conflict theory and role play scenarios of responses to actual conflict situations that Parks and Recreation staff were likely to encounter in field sites, the training program provided a baseline for developing conflict indicators and an understanding of the dichotomy between policy formulation at the central office level and its implementation in the field. Anecdotal post-training feedback from park rangers encountering conflict situations indicates that the APT Team training program has measurably increased their ability to head off the escalation of conflict.

Along with these activities, the APT Team assisted the Parks Department in restructuring its policies and procedures to make them congruent with conflict dynainics taking place in the field. Preliminary discussions were held with Parks and Recreation staff at the deputy director level and with midlevel field managers. At this point, there are two possible directions the team intervention can take:

Continue on a relatively narrow focus of conflict between first line Recreation staff and youth who use various facilities; these conflict interactions, more volatile in nature, are articulated as youth-to-youth or youth-to-staff. Policy reconciliation could begin in the field and percolate up to central office management.

Respond to Parks and Recreation staff's request for training in conflict indicators in the Departunent's newly reorganized field divisions; this is conflict articulated in a broader sense that involves various levels of field staff who engage in a range of contacts with diverse community populations. Such a conflict indicator training program would deal with how these diverse populations signal dissatisfaction with Parks and Recreation policies.

The team planned to explore these two possibilities further in the second grant quarter during 1996, using an emphasis on community empowerment and "voice" to guide its decision.

In addition, the team is designing conflict resolution approaches to reduce conflict and promote intercultural cooperation in South Arlington's Nauck community. While no specific intervention activity for this project was undertaken in the first grant quarter, in the second quarter the Arlington team will conduct research to map intercultural conflict dimensions and propose specific interventions.

The Washington, D.C.,-Based "Divided Societies" APT Team

The Washington-based APT Team, under the direction of Sandra Cheldelin, was active over the summer of 1996, maintaining continuity in is relationship with the community and with locally based key organizations, offering conflict resolution workshops and training. The team continues to make contact with leaders in the community and has identified a series of projects that include conducting Conflict Resolution Workshops for a group of adult women at Martha's Table, a neighborhood service organization, mini-training on "anger management and conflict resolution" for adult GED students at the Academy of Hope, and on "conflict resolution" for teenagers at the Indochinese Community Center.

The team is now in the planning process of working with Barrios Unidos leadership to provide Conflict Resolution Facilitation and Training for members of their board and staff and to facilitate dialogue between organizations and with police and youth. The team is also creating a component of a larger curriculum being developed with the Indochinese Community Center and is offering process consultation and mini-training at Washington, D.C.'s Latin American Youth Center.