Mediation educators win over skeptics

Two educators from the Plowshares Institute who have helped communities deal with polarizing issues such as police brutality and sex education recently brought their brand of mediation to Windward Oahu, and won some converts.

While local flashpoints focus more on tourism and development, a workshop on "Building Skills for Conflict Transformation" seemed to hit home for community members who attended, some of whom have long been at loggerheads.

"I came in as a disbeliever," said Ted Ralston, a member of Ku Pa‘a Kailua, an ad hoc group committed to preserving Kailua Beach Park for noncommercial use. "My attitude was, ‘I’m going to sharpen my spear. I’m not going to give an inch.’

"It was an eye-opening experience," he said after the Feb. 23 session at Windward Community College. "There were more than 30 of us, some very strongly opinionated. We all came in armed, and we got disarmed in the process."

The workshop was led by the Rev. Robert A. Evans, executive director of the Simsbury, Conn.-based Plowshares Institute, and his wife, Alice Frazer Evans, its director of writing and research. The pair got their start in the reconciliation field in South Africa, where they were senior fellows at the Centre for Conflict Resolution at the University of Cape Town. They held training sessions that brought blacks and whites together to learn mediation techniques and how to overcome their fears of each other, in preparation for the first "all-race" elections in South Africa.

Their efforts helped get Plowshares nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and the Ford Foundation invited them to work in cities across the United States. The Evanses came to Hono­lulu at the invitation of the Kailua Chamber of Commerce and Tom Masterson, a former chamber director who had worked with them in Hong Kong. The chamber wanted to "provide a foundation from which people could talk without slings and arrows," Masterson said.

Plowshares is committed to helping people learn how to understand each other’s needs, analyze the roots of conflict, and build relationships as a means to resolution, rather than digging in with rigid, opposing stances. Their strategy involves active listening, paraphrasing, and role playing where people try "walking in each other’s feet" — not just their shoes.

"Our real focus is on equipping local people — articulate, credible people — to be better at intervening creatively in community conflict," Evans said.

In Jacksonville, Fla., where the school board had been hopelessly divided over sex education, Plowshares held training sessions with community members that brought together both sides and ultimately led to the crafting of a curriculum that won unanimous approval.

"The skills are not hard, but people are not oriented to good listening," Cindy Evans said. "We kind of leap in. We don’t step back. We don’t think, ‘What do they really need?’"

In Austin, Texas, Plowshares was invited by the mayor to help forge cross-racial relationships after a charge of police brutality. In Indonesia, Evans advises a Truth and Friendship Commission linking Indonesia and East Timor that seeks to mend their troubled relationship.

Participants at the workshop in Kaneohe delved into a case study from Hong Kong pitting environmentalists trying to protect a marsh against those advocating a freeway bypass and more housing. At the end of the day, they began to shift gears to apply what they had learned to come up with creative solutions to the tussle over tourism in Kailua town.

"People that had been very confrontational wound up being in groups with each other and beginning to develop a relationship," Masterson said.

While in Honolulu, the couple also gave a free public presentation, "Plowshares and the Community Conflict Transformation Program," sponsored by the Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution on Monday and attended a reception at the Spark Matsunaga Institute for Peace.

"The material was not new, but it was powerful," said Karen Cross, a cofounder of Lead4Tomorrow and former manager of the University of Hawaii Program on Conflict Resolution who attended the workshop. "This is for people to use every day. Not that you’re going to be a professional mediator, but as a citizen, you want to have this as a life skill."

Masterson said he hopes to bring the Evanses back for more in-depth sessions. Typically they offer training to a core group, and then train new trainers to coach others. The goal is to create a core of community leaders who can respond constructively to emerging or entrenched conflicts.

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