Mediation Musings: Center
Sara Barnes
For forty years, our name has included the word program. It’s a perfectly good word. We use program with this meaning: plan of action to achieve a specific result. Starting when we became a program of the Edgartown Court in 1984, and going forward to the present, the word “program” has been there, indicating our plan to promote and provide mediation services, with the mission of helping individuals and organizations to resolve their conflicts amicably.
We’ve been looking at this word for over a decade. The word program gave a sense of smallness to some. To others it seemed to indicate we were a subset of a larger organization. Sometimes we were asked questions such as, “You’re a program of what or who?” Often individuals have asserted to us, with strongly held belief, that we are a subsidiary of the court or of the local community services organization, even though we know both are not true. We are a stand-alone 501(c)(3) with our own board of directors. Like a person who abbreviates their disliked name or drops it altogether, we started to go by Martha’s Vineyard Mediation or MV Mediation.
Community Centers
I have had fond associations with community centers throughout my life. As kids we attended the local community center afterschool program. When I was a tenant and had a housing issue and needed to learn how to navigate the courts, I went to the local housing support center. I was briefly on the board of directors of a women’s health center that provided free and affordable services for women and families. In the neighborhood where I was a school principal, the families would call the local community center by its nickname, like a friendly relative —"I’m going to the Mickey-oh” ––when they were on the way to an event.
We like the idea of being a community center for conflict resolution services. We think it sounds more like what we have become—a place to go for support and help, where solid and competent services are offered. And we like the idea of centering on our commitment to serving the various communities that need our services.
So, we are now Martha’s Vineyard Mediation Center. We held on to the Martha’s Vineyard as a way to honor our home base, though we provide virtual courses and services in many locales that are far distant from our island home. We have added, below the new logo, the three words that we think describe our work: education, for our teaching and course work, resolution, for the goal of resolution being created out of conflict, and community—because we strive every day to be of service to all of the communities where we work.
Read the full version of this Mediation Musings essay here.