OUR PHILOSOPHY, MISSION AND GOAL:
OUR PHILOSOPHY:
Jeff Hawkins, an early participant in the founding of Education for Conflict Resolution (ECR), claims "it all started in the Spring of 1988." A diverse group of North Manchester citizens with a vision were offered a grant of "$20,000 per year for three years to develop a church-and-community project in the area of world peace.... This wonderfully diverse group (the Core Committee) was in the midst of wrestling with various ideas of how to tackle the massive undertaking of world peace in a deliberately localized way." According to Hawkins, “the question was deliberated for months; the answer was not going to come easily.” 
However, despite the immensity of the task, “the group worked steadily and by August, a consensus was achieved:
It was decided that world peace ought to begin with community peace, and that community peace depends upon community relationships, and that community relationships benefited greatly from the effective management of inevitable conflict. [Thus], the name Education for Conflict Management grew out of this conclusion, which then later became Education for Conflict Resolution.”
—Angenetta Briner
Today, Education for Conflict Resolution is a primary provider of community-based and school-based conflict resolution training in the state of Indiana. Founded as a broad-based church and community partnership, ECR is committed to providing information and skills training to enable persons to deal more effectively with conflict. When called upon to mediate a dispute, ECR seeks to educate and empower the conflicting parties as it assists them to work through their differences.
Education and personal empowerment have become the cornerstones of ECR’s brand of conflict mediation. Long time mediator and trainer for ECR, Angenetta Briner, remembers that when ECR first began “our dream was to empower people to resolve their own conflicts nonviolently. We knew we needed to take many different roads to accomplish this, so we began offering workshops in schools for students; we trained bus drivers; and we offered community mediation for neighbors, families and friends to learn the process of mediation and the necessary communication skills. We then branched out into three county jails, offering trainings for businesses and also parenting workshops. Our vision was for “each one to teach one,” so after an individual had experienced going through a mediation to resolve their conflict they would share what they had experienced and learned with another individual. That occurred many times. We are teaching the peaceful resolution of conflict—one conflict at a time.”
OUR FOUNDATIONAL STATEMENTS:
ECR's Vision Statement:
Education for Conflict Resolution, Inc. (ECR), envisions a community that values and practices peaceful, nonviolent communication and conflict resolution.
ECR's Mission Statement:
ECR seeks to educate people in nonviolent communication and conflict resolution as we create peaceful communities one mediation at a time.
ECR's Working Goal:
To place the skills needed for successful conflict resolution in the hands of as many persons as possible.
Building a bridge between conflict and resolution is the transformative work of ECR.
OUR CORE VALUES:
These are the core values and philosophical principles that guide all of ECR’s organizational actions and policies and that underlie all its programs and services to the community:
- Cooperation and collaboration
- Inclusivity and non-discrimination
- Clear, productive, and compassionate communication
- Peaceful, nonviolent resolution of conflict
- The modeling healthy and appropriate conflict resolution skills and processes
- A strong belief in the transformational power of the mediation process