As the state dispute resolution agency, the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC), part of UMass Boston’s John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, awards annual state operating grants to 12 local community mediation centers statewide delivering services through trained volunteers. Each January, through a legislative briefing at the State House, MOPC reports back to state officials about the impact the public funding has made in providing conflict resolution services to local courts and communities.
Convened by Representative Sarah Peake and Senator Adam Hinds, the briefing was attended by more than 130 people who listened to students from middle and high schools in Fitchburg, Greenfield, Lawrence, and Lowell talk about helping to resolve conflict in their respective schools and what being a peer mediator has meant to them.