Mediation Works Inc.

CONTACT:

4 Faneuil Hall - Fourth floor
Boston, MA 02109
617-973-9739
www.mwi.org

Charles Doran, Executive Director

DESCRIPTION:

Mediation Works Inc. (MWI) is a dispute resolution service that helps seriously deadlocked families with troubled adolescents to address and resolve their differences without having to place the children in the far more expensive, intrusive, and disruptive, judicial system.

MWI works with families whose adolescents are in major trouble--running away from home, dropping out of school, being labeled incorrigible by parents or outside authorities. The children feel confused, overwhelmed and angry. Often other problems--poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, violence, and inability to communicate--make things worse.

MWI-trained volunteer mediators teach families despairing in these differences to negotiate out of them. The product is a fair, written agreement in which all parties take responsibility for their parts of the practical solution. Staff members monitor follow-through on the agreements for a two-month period thereafter, and arrange additional services if needed. Agreements may later be modified with mediator help, if necessary.

MWI mediators annually facilitate agreements with at least one family per week; agreements are reached successfully in 90% of the cases, and families abide by them in 75% of those cases. To meet the large and increasing demand for its help, MWI now needs $25,000 to extend its services to additional school and community violence prevention programs, in a wider geographic area.

(1997: HUMAN SERVICES: Children and Youth: General)