April 19, 2005 Cultural Diversity MCDR

Recently the MCDR Board held a strategic planning meeting. Among the initiatives for this year is the examination of cultural diversity and cultural diversity awareness within the organization. Although a committee has not been formally established, some overall goals were discussed.

· To build a more culturally diversified membership within MCDR by increasing the number of members who are either from culturally diverse communities or who have specialized knowledge and experience.

· To provide information and education on culturally diverse communities to the current membership. This could include, e.g. posting useful links to the website, self-awareness training at a quarterly meeting, guest speakers, and creating a resource directory that members could access.

· To create alliances within culturally diverse communities as a way to promote public awareness of dispute resolution, to organize additional resources for MCDR mediators, and to encourage the training of mediators through existing resources.

These goals are very broad at the present time and we are just in the “spring” of

our mission. As a first step, we would like to assess our current membership for proficiency of another language. We are not asking this question in anticipation that you will volunteer for something, simply to assess the current resources of the MCDR membership.

If you are proficient in a second language, would you please send a brief email to president@mcdr.org, with the following information:

1) Which language(s)?

2) Are you comfortable with both speaking and writing?

3) Are you comfortable with speaking only?

If you have an interest in growing cultural diversity in MCDR and would like to

be affiliated with a committee, please join us!