CBI Reports Fall 2020
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Green v. Gray: Monitoring Different Shoreline Features Along New York’s Coasts
In recent years, coastal communities across New York State have expressed an interest in moving away from sea walls and other hardened barriers toward more “green” infrastructure to help absorb storm surges and protect coastal communities from flood risk. CBI teamed with the Science and Resilience Institute of Jamaica Bay and a range of stakeholders in developing and piloting a draft statewide monitoring framework to assess the potential of nature-based features to help coastal communities in face of rising sea levels. Read Senior Mediator Bennett Brooks’ account of the project and lessons learned about structuring a successful process on such a technical issue.
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American Friends Service Committee Crafts a Strategy to Champion Dignity for All
For more than a century, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has taken a principled stand against oppression on a wide range of global issues. In 2018, the AFSC sought CBI’s support in determining how it could best contribute to a brighter future and in crafting a strategic plan for 2020-2030. In this article Senior Mediator Michele Ferenz talks about how the facilitation team helped the AFSC, an organization that subscribes to following the leadership of those most affected by exclusion and violence, set a compelling course for its own future.
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“Who are you and why do you get to run the meeting?” Reflections on Facilitator Identity and the Management of Complex Public Disputes
When Senior Associate Toby Berkman, as a white Jewish male, led a meeting of a Catholic congregation that had recently been informed by the Catholic Archdiocese that its church would be closing, he found himself pondering some challenging questions related to facilitator identity in complex public disputes. This situation and others led Toby and Danny Egol, former intern at CBI, to craft this article outlining their thoughts on how a facilitator’s many identities can complicate perceptions of facilitator authority, credibility, and neutrality, as well as some key questions related to identity that facilitators might explore in their work.
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Cultivating Dignity in a Year of Rupture
If the scale of this year’s global health crisis, economic turbulence, social justice uprisings, and climate extremes indicates anything, it’s that there’s an undeniable need to move not just our hearts into a deeper understanding, but also our full selves into the work of greater change. In this blog, CBI Senior Mediator Merrick Hoben reflects on how to create spaces where meaningful and necessary dialogue can occur.
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A High-Wire Act: Mediating High Conflict Online
CBI Senior Mediators Bennett Brooks and Pat Field explore how mediating high-conflict cases has changed, for better and for worse, in the new, all-virtual setting.
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Running Public Meetings in the Time of COVID
CBI West Director Gina Bartlett and CBI Senior Mediator Pat Field share some best practices and lessons learned from transitioning public meetings to virtual spaces.
