Contact us about a restorative plan for your school.
Services tailored to fit your needs and budget.
We believe restorative practices can transform schools into thriving communities. In a restorative school, students, teachers, and administrators respond to conflict in a healthy way. They draw on restorative practice principles when relationship breakdown contributes to conflict, fighting, bullying and other harmful behaviours. Restorative practices significantly improve classroom dynamics and school safety.
Instead of looking to punish, teachers and administrators ask: What happened? Who has been affected? What needs to happen to make things right? Students are empowered to participate and account for harmful behaviours in the reparation of harm.
With the help of CJI-trained peer mediators, students embroiled in conflicts discuss their issues in a safe atmosphere that promotes understanding while clearing up destructive assumptions and repairing damaged relationships.
Most of our mediation services are free. However, we have a sliding fee scale for our workplace mediations and training.
Mediation is a conflict resolution process used to help individuals, families, neighbours, coworkers and classmates to resolve conflict. During a mediation, trained facilitators ensure that everyone has a chance to speak and to listen. Participants discuss how a situation impacted them and ask questions. All are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, listen to others’ perspectives and to repair harm. At the end of the mediation, participants leave with a mutually acceptable plan to move forward.
Forgiveness is not essential to a mediation. In a victim-offender mediation, the full benefit of victim’s needs being met and offender accountability can occur completely without forgiveness.
Mediation is a voluntary process that requires the engagement of all parties involved to be successful. When an inquiry is made, a CJI Service Coordinator will contact all parties to confirm their desire to participate. If there is consensus to proceed with mediation, two mediators are assigned to the case. Mediators have an initial confidential one-on-one meeting with each participant, called case development. During case developments, mediators explore the relationship and the causes of conflict from each participant’s perspective. After case developments are concluded, the mediator will arrange a face-to-face mediation with all participants.
Meeting rooms at CJI’s offices serve well as a neutral location for mediations. Where appropriate, we also host mediations in other neutral spaces such as a community centres. Many of our Elder Mediations occur where older adults are residing – their homes, retirement homes, long term care facilities, etc.
CJI’s mediators are trained and supervised volunteers who have completed the Transformative Mediation Training through Conrad Grebel University College. Mediators work in pairs, co-facilitating with each other. This allows for a matching of skills and experience. The mediators support each other and the participants through the process
CJI creatively, and innovatively applies restorative justice principles to challenging community problems.
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