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New Earth Foundation Grant

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Common Ground Mediation Services received a grant from New Earth Foundation of Sedona, Arizona for $19,500 for our project entitled, Modular Community-to-Global Mediation Training Project.

Mediation is one of the finest tools available to resolve disputes. Its effectiveness has been proven in every sector of society, from the schoolyard to the international arena. We believe mediation is capable of becoming an organizing principle for civil society, for the establishment of right human relations and eventually—if even a hundred years hence—for the willingness of nations to disarm.

Though mediation is used in a random patchwork of sectors, the transformative potential of its universal applicability has yet to be realized. Simultaneous training of youth, law enforcement, courts, and community leadership within a given nation can help realize this "resonance effect." We offer simultaneous training of these four sectors of civil society, with a special emphasis on tribal nations.

Under a previous grant offered by New Earth Foundation, Common Ground has provided these multi-sector trainings to: Nambé Pueblo, Santa Clara Pueblo, and Peace Keepers (a domestic violence program affiliated with Eight Northern Pueblos). This year, the grant will be utilized by Taos Pueblo and Pojoaque Valley High School, which serves youth from four of the Eight Northern Pueblos.

The goal of this project is to enhance communication and creative problem solving among and between all the major sectors of the tribal nation's community: members of the governing body, the courts, the police, the youth, health care providers, and the community at large. The result is a safer, more highly actualized community reflected by a decrease in violence, crime, school suspensions and expulsions, school drop-out rates, truancy, domestic violence, new incidents of drug and alcohol addiction, litigation and teen suicide.

Thanks again to New Earth Foundation!