Committee on Conflict Transformation

Contact the Committee at [email protected]

 

Introduction to the Committee on Conflict Transformation

    The Committee on Conflict Transformation serves the monthly meetings in New York Yearly Meeting, and the Yearly Meeting itself when it convenes in Sessions. Our objective is, when invited, to assist meetings in situations of disabling conflict and help facilitate the transformation of those situations into opportunities for spiritual growth, both for the individuals involved and for their meetings. This can be accomplished either by timely intercession in response to a crisis or by helping the engaging group to build skills in avoiding debilitating conflict.

 

    The Committee includes Friends who are experienced and skilled as active listeners, problem solvers, and mediators. We provide an opportunity for troubled Friends to be heard with empathy in the assurance of a safe environment. We endeavor to help Friends consider their situations in new ways that allow for constructive and positive transformation and test whether a way forward might be found, beyond the conflict that the individual or the meeting may be experiencing.

 

    We invite all Friends, whether in a corporate or an individual capacity, to think of the Committee on Conflict Transformation when confronted with two types of challenges:

  • first, consider us as “first responders” to a crisis; and
  • second, as a resource to train the meeting in the skills of conflict acknowledgement, understanding, and prevention.

 

We’re here and ready. Contact the Committee at [email protected].

Link to the Committee's Handbook page.

 

Conflict in Quaker Meetings: Crisis or Opportunity?

View our videos of a Conflict Transformation workshop to see what our workshops are like.

Order the video on DVD. To order one, contact the Yearly Meeting office. You can pay by check, or by credit card on our online payment page. If you pay online, please let us know by email at [email protected] or call the office at (212) 673 - 5750. The cost is $15 including shipping.

 

Some resources for conflict transformation

Conflict Transformation Film web page

    In the fall of 2013, the Conflict Transformation Committee filmed one of its Conflict in Quaker Meetings: Crisis or Opportunity? workshops. The link above takes you to the web page for the project. The first link below takes you to the full-length film of the full workshop and the other links are for the individual sessions that comprise the workshop.

 

Print resources

     Click the titles to download pdf files of these resources:

  • When Conflicts Arise: Crisis or Invitation? — an article by Peter Phillilps and the Committee on Conflict Transformation that appeared in the April 2013 issue of Friends Journal that seeks to help meetings "use the conflict to prompt a change and transform the Monthly Meeting into a place better able to acknowledge and deal with conflict in love and integrity, and [deepen and enhance] its own spiritual journey." This is a pdf file is available by generous permission from Friends Journal: ©2013 Friends Publishing Corporation. Reprinted with permission. To subscribe: www.friendsjournal.org." 
  • Conflict Transformation Workshop Agenda — a sample agenda of a workshop that the Committee can bring to your meeting that shows how a typical workshop flows.
  • A Presentation on Conflicts in Meetings — a PowerPoint presentation that accompanies the workshop.

Books and pamphlets available from the FGC bookstore, quakerbooks.org

The Joy of Conflict Resolution: Transforming Victims,Villains and Heroes in the Workplace and at Home, Gary Harper; $19.95.

Quakers in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Dilemma of NGO Humanitarian Activism, Nancy Gallagher; $29.95.

Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management and Transformation of Deadly Conflict, Hugh Miall, Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse; $34.95.

Conflict Transformation Therapy, Juliette Garesche & R W Alley; $4.95.

Quakers in Conflict: The Hicksite Reformation, Larry Ingle; $10.

Natural Conflict Resolution, Fran de Waals & Fillipo Aureli; $5.

Conflict Resolution K-2, Didax; World Teacher's Press; $5.

The Little Book of Conflict Transformation, John Paul Lederbach; $4.95.

Conflict Mediation Across Cultures: Pathways and Patterns, David W. Augsburger; $25.