St. Stephen’s Conflict Resolution Centre
Social/Environmental benefit
For over 20 years, the community mediation program has helped resolve various forms of conflict among the St. Stephen’s area residents who come from diverse cultural, economic, religious and social groups, helping to prevent and solve social problems and develop harmonious relationships within the St. Stephen’s community.
Profile
St. Stephen’s Community House (SSCH) is a multi-service social agency with a mission to identify, prevent and alleviate social and economic problems by creating and providing a range of effective and innovative programs.
Their programs help develop harmonious relationships among different cultural, economic, religious and social groups in a very diverse community. The programs include child care, youth services, senior services, employment and training programs, language training and newcomer services, wellness promotion and neighbourhood support. Over the years, St. Stephen’s has been a pioneer in new service delivery models and programs.
One of St. Stephen’s successes is a community mediation program that was started in 1985. Trained volunteer mediators help people in the community talk about a conflict or dispute in a safe and constructive way, fair to both sides. The goal of community mediation is to build or rebuild relationships among people, enabling them to resolve interpersonal disputes over things like parking, noise, shared housing, interpersonal disputes, minor criminal matters and minor commercial conflicts.
The Conflict Resolution Service (CRS) at St. Stephen’s Community House is also a social enterprise that builds on and seeks to provide additional funding for the charitable community mediation program. Over 20 years of operation, CRS has built the expertise and evolved an excellent reputation for delivering Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) services. CRS provides professional mediation, facilitation, public and customized training and consulting services to individuals, businesses and organizations across the GTA on a fee for service basis. Subsidized or no-cost services are sometimes offered to charities and non-profits, and groups and individuals who face financial barriers to accessing professional mediation services.
In 2008, SSCH undertook to confirm CRS’ position as a recognized leader in the field of conflict resolution and to significantly expand the fee-for-service side of the CRS operation. SSCH is currently developing a business plan to map the future of SSCH CRS with a goal to increasing revenues from the social enterprise to scale up the community-based services to meet the needs of a broader community and expand the subsidized and no-cost services to a wider client base.
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