Marsha Hunt is the Chief Financial Officer of Uganda Development Initiative (UDI), which works to increase education opportunities in Uganda by building schools and providing sponsorship programs, tutorials, and support to agricultural, medical and small business programs. She connected to MBBI through Rotary International at the 2015 MBBI Congress in Romania and since, has continued to be an active member of the Mediators Beyond Borders International – Los Angeles Regional Group (MBBI—LA).

Facilitating Dialogue

Marsha’s main involvement with MBBI—LA is through their partnership with Days of Dialogue, a nonprofit organization hosting a series of community-based discussions with the people of Los Angeles and cooperating law enforcement agencies. These dialogues endeavor to uphold the principals of mutual respect and human dignity. In an effort to prevent further violence these facilitative dialogues help shape the future of our community.

Marsha serves as a facilitator with Days of Dialogue and she firsthand has seen the power of conversation between police officers and local citizens. The citizens are able to voice their concerns about their communities directly to those tasked with making those communities safer. And likewise, the police officers are receptive to these concerns and are able to prioritize the needs of the community directly.

This model of a deliberative and facilitated conversation is a main passion of Marsha. So much so that at Rotary International’s peace conferences, she is at the MBBI Booth discussing the power of the Days of Dialogue model! Rotarians continually ask her how to export this method of community reconciliation and conflict resolution skills to their communities. The future of MBBI’s and Rotary’s partnership can rely on the strengths of this moldable and adaptable project of community-based dialogue mediation.

Education for Development

Marsha is also the CFO of Uganda Development Initiative (UDI), which supports economic growth, enables children to attend school and gain an education, assists the people of Uganda in developing small business programs and provides opportunities for advancements in the Medical, Science, and Technology fields. UDI is dedicated to training teachers to continue to further this education and provide for a sustainable future for Uganda.

Since 2004, UDI has built and upgraded buildings, restrooms, sports facilities, and safe water projects. Further, UDI promotes self-sustaining farming for refugee families, growing coffee, tea and fruit trees for food and income and solar power generation is also being installed. All of these initiatives are in the Kanungu district of southwestern Uganda, bordering Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Marsha’s interested in Uganda was originally sparked by a visit there and since that first trip; she has helped to build four elementary schools, a high school, a college, and a medical center. The Rotary Clubs of Westwood Village in California, Kabale in Uganda, and Memmingen in Germany are collaborating to help with these projects. Marsha was the president of the Westwood Village Rotary Club further combining her passions into one positive peace project. She now has an honorary doctorate from Nkumba University and continues to return to the country annually.

Check out UDI’s social media here.

Marsha is a champion of development and dialogue for community reconciliation and growth!

Article by Ben Lutz, MBBI Writer

Jerri M. Sutton is the founder of Communication Advocacy and Mediation (CAM) Consulting Services, LLC, which focuses on exposing intrinsic potential through the provision of tools to empower current and future generations. Jerri is a newer member of MBBI; she found MBBI through a successful Google search for international mediation networks.

Authentic Mediation

To Jerri, authenticity is extremely important in life, being real and true to yourself allows people to encounter your genuine nature. She embodies over 20 years of motivational speaking and organizational management; she has managed non-profit programs, government initiatives, and corporate endeavors. She is a mediator on the 20^th Judicial Circuit in the State of Florida and is a board member of the Mediation Advisory Council (MAC). MAC shows appreciation to the volunteer mediators across the 20^th Judicial Circuit with by honoring them at a banquet. Thus, applauding their sacrifice of time to provide crucial mediation services throughout the Circuit. Mediation is a form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) that Jerri wholeheartedly champions and supports.

Mediation is the greatest form of empowerment.

She has been sanctioned to teach on many subjects from First Time Homebuyer Courses to First Aid, CPR, and AED. She has developed presentations utilized to certify AmeriCorps members on diversity and citizenship to the successful recruitment of volunteers. These varied experiences represent the makeup of Jerri’s successful and holistic mediation career.

CAM and ACE

Jerri founded Communication Advocacy and Mediation (CAM) Consulting Services, LLC in 2016 to address the needs of her community: stronger communication, efficient advocacy, and streamlined mediation. Through CAM, she has written curriculum focusing on communication strategies, co-created a realistic board game on domestic violence, and mediates familial and children-based conflicts. The board game, The Economy of Odds, was inspired by the pervasive and simplistic mentality of “why don’t survivors of domestic violence just leave their partner?” There are countless financial, personal, emotional, familial, and mental reasons behind a decision that monumental, and her board game is demystifying this real process.

Alongside domestic violence victims, the community struggling with mental and physical limitations is often overlooked and must contend with a lack of resources. To that end, Jerri also founded the Academy for Capacity and Enrichment (ACE), which focuses on psychosocial support programming for the staff and clients in this underserved community. She has created emotional, physical, and experiential capacity building programs for group homes; programs on lifesaving skills from the American Red Cross to sensory enrichment programs like yoga, hiking, and exercise.

For information to either or both organizations, email Jerri at jsutton@camconhelps.com

Dependency Mediation and Parental Advocacy

Jerri is an active Dependency Mediator. Dependency Mediation provides the opportunity for parents, Departments of Children and Families, the Guardian ad Litem Program and potentially other relevant collaterals involved in a children-centered case to have a confidential and privileged discussion moderated by a mediator. The objective is to bring all parties together in a form of empowerment and self-determination to see if they can voluntarily reach and submit an agreement to the court for approval. Child Protection Mediation and Permanency Mediation are synonyms for this type of mediation.

Looking ahead, Jerri is looking to be a more active member of the Child & Youth Alternate Dispute Resolution Working Group (C&Y ADR WG). Jerri’s main passion is Parental Advocacy. Being the mother of three and grandma (Yaya) to two, she is strongly affected by the lack of parental involvement in the education of children. To that end, she is authoring a book to instruct parents on how to empower themselves and advocate for their children in the school system. Some of the barriers addressed are insecurity, a lack of pedagogy language skills, and previous negative academic experiences amongst others She desires to help parents realize and understand how they are a source and resource for their kids.

Throughout her career, Jerri has based her mediation career off this quote from Albert Einstein “NO problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

Article by Ben Lutz, MBBI Writer

MBBI Board of Directors (BoD) is urging members, volunteers, interns, and staff to join forces in fostering the organization’s brand awareness to enhance the organization’s access to much-needed funding to continue building a more peace “able” world.

In today’s competitive nonprofit world, having a solid brand remains an integral part of successful fundraising. Enhanced brand awareness opens more doors for strategic relationship building, which impacts organizational performance and sustainability. Thus, MBBI affiliates can contribute to strengthening its brand by becoming brand ambassadors. A robust word-of-mouth campaign that focuses on MBBI’s mission and achievements over the years will go a long way in creating this global awareness. Combined with social media efforts, this can be a powerful way to tell MBBI’s story to the world.

In separate exclusive interviews last week, BoD’s Chair, Dave Joseph stated that “our greatest challenge is that we are one of the world’s best-kept secrets. People don’t know enough about our extraordinary work, they don’t know about the things that we’ve accomplished, they don’t know what resources we need to be able to continue to do this remarkable work.” He urges everyone to lead the charge for a “more visible MBBI, with diverse funding sources and an established support structure.” He elaborated: “We want to be able to respond to requests for service, but we need the funding that would make it possible for us to do so.”

Of course, to effectively respond to soaring demands for its services, MBBI must expand its organizational infrastructure. With currently nearly 1,000 members worldwide, MBBI has made enormous strides in transforming the lives of hundreds of individuals in conflicts all over the globe. It is committed to building awareness of the importance of mediation, defined broadly, as a peacebuilding tool and is enthusiastic about creating global awareness of climate change and the many conflicts that creates. One of MBBI’s greatest accomplishments is its new strategic partnership with Rotary International, which Dave thinks is an “excellent way to broaden “the awareness and reach of MBBI.

Charlie Pillsbury, BoD Treasurer, is equally proud of the MBBI—Rotary partnership. He’s also very proud of the Colombia Project of which he was a founding member, as well as MBBI’s International Training Institute (ITI), dedicated to training global women peacebuilders.

The Bigger Issue

Addressing the issue of visibility, Charlie said it persists because there is a lot of misconceptions about what mediators do and how they do it. “People tend to define Mediation very narrowly as a quasi-legal process, but mediation, when understood broadly, at the heart of several key peacebuilding tools, including group dialogue facilitation, restorative justice, as well as mediation. It is not about the mediation process itself; it’s about collaborating with your local partners to determine what peacebuilding tool will work best for them in their context to manage the conflicts they are facing.”

Board member Courtney Bourns shares similar sentiments. According to him, “one of our greatest challenges is to help people in conflict understand that mediation is the avenue to use to resolve conflict. Mediation is too little used as an alternative. Catching people’s attention or getting them to listen to us and give credibility to this field is still a challenge.” He elaborated:

In addition to helping people understand the value of mediation, we, as an organization, need to be more successful at fundraising to reach our goal. We need to talk about the impact we are having in various communities around the world. We must acknowledge that our capacity to deliver services depends on our capacity to raise the funds that we need.

All three board members are extremely proud to be part of an organization that is setting a high bar for its ambitious mission and is committed to that mission. They hope that MBBI will increase its membership and active presence around the world, build its staff, and diversify its funding streams. “To meet the enormous demand for our services, we must build a solid foundation with loyal funding sources and skilled staff,” Charlie said.

The Board is currently inviting new members to help MBBI successfully achieve its mission objectives. “Each of us brings different strengths and qualities to MBBI [the organization] and together we have the ability to do so much more if we work together as a team, valuing and leveraging the strengths of each one. Strengths. can improve the quality and quantity of its team,” Courtney said. The challenge here, according to Charlie, is that the majority of the current BoD members are mediators. The Board is therefore now seeking non-mediators, allies who understand and value mediation, to become members and join our board.

Moreover, the need to demonstrate to members that “MBBI is doing what it said it would do and is, in fact, doing so really well,” was a recommendation coming from all three board members. Charlie summed it up in these words: “do the job well and communicate effectively with current and future members about the progress being made.”

Brief Backgrounds:

Dave Joseph joined MBBI in 2008, having been trained as a mediator in 1995 and co-founded a community mediation center in Rhode Island a year later. Moved by what he described as a “fabulous organization that is very responsive to requests for help,” Dave joined the Liberia Project, with which he worked from 2008-2012. He found this project especially intriguing because it focused on former combatants who had made a commitment to build peace and Dave thought that was “remarkable and worthwhile.” He wanted to support them in reconstructing and rebuilding a more “peace-able Liberia.” The project taught dialogue and how to use dialogue to rebuild a sense of community and connection among citizens. One aspect of the project focused exclusively on women, he explained. What was really exciting at the beginning of this yearlong process, was that “over time, the dialogues helped the women to reconnect, strengthen and build a more resilient community.” At the end of the training, a female participant said: “as a former rebel, I wish we had known about dialogue because perhaps we would not have had a civil war.” For 25 years, Dave worked as a family therapist and ran out-patient mental health and addiction programs. In 2009, he was elected to become a member of MBBI’s BoD. A year ago, he was elected to become the Chair of MBBI’s BoD. Dave also serves as a Senior Associate at Essential Partners.

Charlie Pillsbury is a lawyer who served for 20 years as the executive director of Community Mediation, Inc., in New Haven, CT. He sees mediation, especially at local levels, promoting justice and mercy, with humility. “Being a mediator has been very rewarding,” he says, “because it enables people to take control of their lives. As a lawyer, I was trained to help people. As a mediator, I’m trained to help people help themselves.” Charlie first learned about MBBI when he received an email saying: “contribute to world peace, through mediation, for $1 day.” In his eyes, this was “a really good deal.” He joined in 2007 as one of MBBI’s founding members and became its first executive director in 2009. In 2014, he switched roles with Prabha, who then was the MBBI BoD Treasurer; Charlie was elected to the BoD and became Treasurer when Prabha was hired as MBBI’s President and CEO. Charlie currently teaches and is also Co-Director of the Center on Dispute Resolution at Quinnipiac University School of Law.

Courtney Bourns was introduced to MBBI by a law partner. He joined as a volunteer of the Resource Development Committee (RDC) but was asked to join the BoD shortly thereafter. He is an experienced divorce mediator, inspired by his desire to ease the experience of divorce for parties. In fact, Courtney was moved to “focus his law practice on divorce mediation” after realizing that through litigation, parties were inclined to fight longer in court “with the help of lawyers.” This, he said, made “couples even more estranged and more alienated from each other than they were before we began.” But, through mediation, “couples would come back and say we are better friends now than we were when we came into your practice.” Courtney is “convinced that mediation helps us to listen, understand, respect, and value one another.”

Download here MBBI’s 2017-18 Impact Report.

An article by Fatoumata Bility, MBBI Writer