Building Capacity to Address Conflict and Create Community Resiliency

We are often asked to come into a community or organization to facilitate Restorative Practices in order to help them handle a conflict situation that is already underway. There are also times when, instead of or in addition to facilitating ourselves, we train a group of circle keepers who are members of the community - whether it be a school, business, faith organization, or any other group - that will continue the process of strengthening relationships and be able to facilitate restorative conversations the next time there is a conflict. In this case, our focus becomes to teach Restorative Practices skills to a small group of individuals within the community, so that they are empowered to use these tools as needed going forward. This is capacity building: the process of developing a community’s ability to address issues in a way that will help them fulfill their mission.

As an example of capacity building, we worked with one community that wanted to find a way to restoratively address the topics of racism, school mascots, and slave-holding town founders that have been important subjects confronting many communities recently. Their hope was that these conversations would strengthen the community by building relationships, enhancing understanding and developing a shared sense of belonging. We trained a group of community members to become community circle keepers, meaning that they hold the role of facilitator of the talking circle. They lay out the group agreements for the conversation, prepare questions (known as rounds) that each person will have a chance to respond to, and facilitate the actual talking circle. The rounds walk the group through the process of getting more comfortable with each other and sharing their experiences on these very complex subjects, opening the way for deeper understanding and compassion. These trained Circle Keepers are now utilizing circles to hold discussions regularly about belonging, inclusion, and race within their community

In our culture and in our conversations we are often inclined to go directly to the issues or problems. A significant part of our work is training people how to slow down and shift away from the urgency of getting right to “the issues” and instead focus on relationship building first. This can start as simply as making time for everyone to check in about how they are feeling that day, or share a highlight of their week. Then the group might answer more complex questions, such as talking about a time when they felt ___ or something that has been difficult for them in regards to a particular subject. As participants get to know one another better, there is usually a sense of camaraderie, more trust in each other, and greater investment in the wellbeing of the community. All of this is crucial and becomes the foundation upon which Restorative Practices function when it comes time to address difficult issues or deal with conflict.  

Sometimes a community will choose a conjoined approach of having us facilitate circles first, and then training a group of circle keepers who remain in the community. During the pandemic we worked with another community group that had been isolated from each other due to social distancing.  Much of their communication had moved online to facebook.  During the racial reckoning in summer of 2020, the online conversations became divisive and toxic. Through circles, we helped them address the hurt and harm that had been done through the online forum.  We hosted several circles for people to express their perspective, concern, frustration and hurt. Through this  work, healing conversations were started but not finished. The group requested that we train community members to be circle keepers, so that the community would be empowered to continue the conversations themselves. Having gotten to know them and their unique situation, we customized our Circle Keeper training to fit their particular needs, training  a group of individuals to continue to facilitate circles in the community.

There are also moments when an organization calls on  P2RC to directly facilitate circles, rather than do capacity building. For example, it may be a situation where time is of the essence, or a conflict that has escalated to the point where immediate intervention is called for, and there isn’t time to train members of the community because circles need to begin as soon as possible. Or it might be a situation where everyone is enmeshed in the issue at hand and it would benefit the community to have a neutral party facilitate a healing process.

As an example of the latter circumstance, several years ago we were called to work with a community center that had a conflict around the use of  space. The manager of the community center had made a decision to move the activities of a group made up of primarily people of Chinese descent to a different space without consulting them, which caused hurt, confusion, and feelings of discrimination and caused disruption within the community as a whole.  In Restorative Practices, problem-solving is seen as more effective when those in positions of power work with the people in conflict to find a solution, rather than dictating a solution to the groups, thus strengthening relationships and creating more trust and harmony in the long run. In other words, the solution is relational and inclusive. In this situation, we held circles with many members of the community on both sides of the issue to explore alternative solutions. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of this work was that it began to address the racial tension inherent in the conflict.  While it did not eliminate the issues of racism, which are almost never solved overnight, it did offer an opportunity for members to soften the sharp edges and open up the conversation in constructive ways.  

Whether capacity building or direct services is right for your circumstances depends on many factors, and either choice may be right for the moment.  However, when a group has people with the right tools and skills to lead these processes themselves, they increase their capacity for building harmonious relationships, trust, and resilience in the long term.