The Mediation Center's services include:

Resource Links: As a walk-in community center on a busy street, the Mediation Center is well-positioned to understand and address neighborhood concerns.  The Mediation Center’s storefront location and open-door policy mean residents drop in to seek help, resources, and referrals for a variety of problems.  Last year, Mediation Center staff served 1,900 community members who were seeking assistance with issues related to housing, family disputes, community concerns, unemployment, and immigration—the latter through a monthly on-site immigration clinic run in partnership with the Legal Aid Society.  The Mediation Center also updates and distributes two Resource Directories, one focused on the needs of people returning to the community after having been incarcerated and the second, more general guide that lists services like counseling, job raining, and day care.  Over 1,000 copies are distributed each year. Click here for a copy of the Reentry Resource guide and here for the general community guide. 

Trainings: The Center provides customized trainings for schools, community-based organizations, religious groups and others, offering workshops in conflict resolution, mediation, diversity and more.
Click here for a full listing of our available trainings.


The Mediation Center brings together diverse groups for
trainings and to make positive change in the neighborhood.

Leadership Training: The Mediation Center’s Leadership Training Institute brings together local community activists from diverse racial, religious, and cultural backgrounds to participate in a series of in-depth community-organizing trainings.  The Institute has three principal goals: to train a rising generation of community leaders to take prominent positions in the community; to create an opportunity for these new leaders to build open relationships with other young representatives from ethnic and religious backgrounds different than their own; and to build a new and durable multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious network of leaders who can work to tackle the problems that confront all Crown Heights residents.  Through the Leadership Training Institute, professional leaders gain critical skills while building relationships in ways that will engender long-term tolerance and respect.  Last year 20 community leaders organized a cultural fair attended by close to 1,000 community residents.  Monthly workshop topics have include topics such as,  coalition building, fundraising, community organizing, networking, and conflict resolution.

Save Our Streets Crown Heights (SOS): S.O.S is a community-based effort to end shootings and killings in Crown Heights.  Highly-trained outreach workers – hired for their street credibility, their knowledge of the neighborhood, and the positive changes they have made in their own lives – work evenings and nights to interrupt shootings and prevent violence. These traits that help make them successful outreach workers are the same ones that make them trusted by the people most likely to be involved in shootings. In building these relationships, the outreach workers not only embody a different path in life, but also assist with GED classes, job interviews, and counseling. They consistently teach and show that there are other options rather than violence. Workers also organize very public community responses – marches and vigils – to every shooting that occurs in the 77th precinct. Working with local clergy, residents and business owners, S.OS. has one goal: to end the spread of violence and show that shootings and killings are not acceptable in Crown Heights.

Youth Development Programs: The Mediation Center’s Youth Development programs work to build leadership and prevent violence among young people by providing them with tools for resolving conflict peacefully, teaching skills in communication and decision making, improving self-esteem, and engaging young people in service learning activities that allow them to develop and demonstrate healthy, responsible behavior. 
The Center’s current youth initiatives include:

• TIP (Truancy Intervention Program), an anti-truancy program at Middle School 352 that combines: one-on-one meetings with students to identify individualized strengths and concerns and set clear attendance goals; family conferences to ensure that a student’s parent or guardian is a part of a coherent school attendance strategy; and a student-led Youth Court to hold truant students accountable through positive peer pressure. The program relies on a combination of early identification, individualized assessments, family engagement, student (and parental) accountability,  and education to promote compliance with attendance regulations and foster greater connectivity to their school for chronically truant students.
• Rites of Passage, a program addressing issues that many young people ages 11-18 face as they move through puberty, helping them develop a positive self-image and a more comprehensive and healthier understanding of gender and gender relations in contemporary society. A school and community based program, Rites of Passage provides young men and women with the opportunity to work with strong positive role models as they reflect on their own identity, their choices, their expectations and their goals. Each course runs for approximately two months and meets for twelve class sessions. Through the program, participants gain leadership, advocacy, organizational, and conflict resolution skills.
• Youth Entrepreneurship Program is a skills and personal development program in which young people collaborate on the creation and implementation of a youth-led business.  Last year, the Mediation Center ran the program at Middle School 334.  Students created inspirational buttons that they sold through the community.  This year, young women reflecting the diversity of Crown Heights, including the African American, West Indian, and Lubavitch communities are coming together to start media company. Learning photography, graphic design, and entrepreneurial skills the group’s main project is to create a community cookbook that incorporates recipes and stories from the various cultures represented in Crown Heights. The cookbook will be sold throughout the community.
• School Justice Center, a centralized space at the Brooklyn School for Global Studies for programming that involves students in the important decisions that affect their lives.  The services include: Mediation, a confidential opportunity for students to talk through their conflicts guided by a neutral supportive adult or student; Peer Mediation, formal and informal training for students interested in becoming mediators; Student Government, elected representatives who plan events and advocate for student needs; Rites of Passage, sex-segregated workshops discussing the transition to young adulthood; and Processing, an opportunity for reflection linked to minor disciplinary infractions.

Facilitation Services: Facilitations are group sessions designed to promote understanding and tolerance among diverse groups in the community.  The Center’s role in this process can include everything from convening coalitions and facilitating dialogue, to providing space and administrative support.  Facilitation sessions can be useful in all kinds of situations – from working with a discordant block association to plan a street fair, to organizing a peace march to bring together residents after a violent event in the community.