Upcoming
Events & Activities
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Aug 24 Sep 10 Oct 1 (2-hour clinic)
Oct 26-27
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From Darlene's Desk
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Dear Friend of Community Boards,
All of us at Community Boards wish to thank you again for helping make our 3rd Annual San Francisco Peacemaker Awards a resounding success. We are grateful for the tremendous turnout and all of our sponsors and guests. Our Peacemaker Award winners also wish to extend their appreciation. We're already planning for next year's awards benefit.
Our collaboration with Joan Blades and Living Room Conversations is evolving into a meaningful additional direction for Community Boards, offering our cadre of mediators and volunteers who care so deeply about dialogue and participation in democracy a new way to engage with their respective communities. Read below to learn more about how to participate in the next step of our new joint project.
I was recently in Spain meeting with mediators, educators, and program evaluation experts. In Bilbao, I attended the 6th International Seminar in Dialogue Methods for the Promotion of Coexistance. Here I led a full day training for mediators at the Gizagune Foundation and Elkargunea Network for Promoting Peaceful Coexistence in Local Governments. Soon after, I led another training for graduate students at the School of Prevention and Security at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. I look forward to more international educational exchanges. We have so much to learn from each other. It's been incredibly exciting to learn how community mediation is applied in other settings.
Inspired by the above, I have a personal goal of learning more from all of you. I will be creating 'dates' for us to get together, to talk about new directions and innovations and hear what matters most to you as a volunteer and community partner. Together, we can continue to keep Community Boards a relevant and valuable resource for all of San Francisco's diverse communities.
Warmly,
Darlene
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#1: VIDEO - Angie Minkin, Volunteer of the Quarter
|  Many remarkable people volunteer at Community Boards on different projects and programs. In appreciation of their great work, we are thrilled to introduce our very first Volunteer of the Quarter, Angie Minkin.
Angie is one of Community Boards' coach for our new Conflict Coaching Program. She has some wonderful insights to share about this latest program. Click here to view Angie's interview on YouTube.
Angie recently retired from the California Public Utilities Commission, where she served as an Administrative Law Judge for many years. Angie is very involved in her neighborhood and is the chair of the Excelsior Action Group's Advisory Board and a member of the Ingleside Police Station Community Police Advisory Board. She is a trained mediator, volunteers with Community Boards, and is especially interested in peaceful and creative conflict resolution. Angie's focus is improving public safety in the Excelsior District. She is also interested in working together to improve our collective environment.
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#2: Living Room Conversations
Register for August 8 Teleconference with Joan Blades
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 Community Boards is excited to be holding our first teleconference with Joan Blades on August 8th. CB and Living Room Conversations encourages you to co-host a conversation on a topic that you care about. For those of you who came to our Peacemaker Awards, we hope that you are already inspired by Living Room Conversations. If you missed the event, here's a great chance to learn more about what Joan is up to and how your skills and passion for community dialogue can be used in this innovative community engagement project. In 2012 Living Room Conversations were co-hosted by trained New Hampshire Listens leaders across the state. The goal: bring civility back to the public sphere and spark dialogue with a wide variety of citizens. New Hampshire Listens provided a unique online and in person community to facilitate Living Room Conversations on the Role of Government. ( Click here for participant testimonials.) Please contact Cordell know if you'd like to join the August 8 Teleconference. You can reach him at (415) 920-3820 x109 or click here to email him. We hope you can join us! | |
#3: SF Police Department Outreach Campaign
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 Community Boards has had a long-standing relationship with the SF Police Department, and we greatly appreciate the support from the SF Police Officers Association. The SFPD is the single largest source of referrals for us and we greatly appreciate this ongoing partnership. At our recent Peacemaker Awards benefit, we honored two police officers doing outstanding community peacemaking work, John Cathey and David Sands. Thanks to the SF Police Officers Association, we've recently re-designed our police referral cards, which officers distribute when responding to disturbance calls. We will soon be launching a police outreach and education campaign. We will distribute these cards to each of the SF station houses, and make presentations at their monthly community forums and daily officer roll calls. We invite Community Boards volunteers to participate in this campaign. Please let Lucia know if you'd like help with this new project. You can reach her at (415) 920-3820 x102 or click here to email her.
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#4: New & Improved Mediation Masters
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We are giving our quarterly Mediation Masters a facelift. It is one of our goals this new year to build a greater sense of community among our Community Mediators, while concurrently giving them a viable forum to share experiences, ideas, and challenges.
The "new and improved" Mediation Masters is designed to do just that. Building on the positive experiences we are having with our quarterly Conflict Coaching Consortium meetings, the revamped Mediation Masters will be a forum for our mediators to network, learn about one another, and support each other. Each meeting will include learning a fun getting-to-know-you exercise, sharing challenges and successes, and discussing other topics relevant to the field.
We will be sending out more information soon about the next Mediation Masters to be held on Wednesday, September 18, 5-7:30 PM. We hope to see you there!
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