Community Alternative Dispute Resolution Program (CADR)

How the Program Emerged

There are yet many documented instances of communities, governmental bodies, and organizations in conflict. Almost all of the current political races see one or all of the candidates talking about the need to bring people together. It is a consistent theme. This call for bringing people together is consistent amongst leaders locally, regionally, and nationally. If this is to happen, we all need to think about different, alternative ways of engaging ourselves, our leaders, and our communities.

Organizations and communities are facing an environment where leaders need to deal with the growing complexity of social, economic and environmental issues. Polarization and conflict are increasingly commonplace. This increased complexity requires a different kind of leadership and a different kind of process.

The Center For Rural Planning’s principles for community work are based on
three principles:

• Community planning is best accomplished by its citizens. • Community planning can provide opportunities for building community relationships and leaders. • The most successful planning endeavors are those that use a collaborative, alternative dispute resolution process.

What is the CADR Program?

This CADR program responds to the well-documented need for civil public dialogues, fair and effective decision-making processes, and the need for increased citizen knowledge and effective leadership.

The Alternative part of this program is reflected in the process used to address important issues of public and community life by connecting leaders and citizens through community conversations (dialogues) and decision-making processes.

The Alternative part also refers to a “neutral” third party who helps them resolve their dispute. We call this “neutral” a facilitative leader.

CADR is a program that provides communities and organizations alternative processes to conduct dialogues on divisive issues, to conduct decision-making and policy consensus processes, and to provide workshops that train facilitative leaders to lead communities and organizations through these processes.

The CADR Program offers community dialogues and decision-making processes for communities. The program also offers training on the processes and facilitative leadership.

What can the CADR program do for your organization or community?

The CADR Program will initially have four offerings:

• An introductory overview of CADR • Dialogue Workshops • Decision-Making Policy Consensus Workshops • Facilitative Leadership, Conflict Resolution, and Worldviews Workshop

We will gladly meet with your organization and talk about our CADR program, what it offers, and clarify the differences between debate, dialogue, decisionmaking and what might be useful your organization and your situation.

We can tailor these conversations to meet the individual needs of your organizations. Typically, these presentations last from 30 minutes to an hour. We will help you understand the components of our CADR program, the differences between dialogues, decision-making and the skills that facilitative leaders need to conduct those processes. We will also talk about what issues may be approached through dialogues and and decision-making processes. And, we’ll talk about facilitative leadership.