Our Vision, Mission & Values
Our Vision
We see conflict as an opportunity for positive growth and transformation in our society. We envision a future in which all individuals, organizations and communities have the skills and capacity to engage in effective dialogue and promote peaceful resolution of issues and conflicts.
Our Mission
Our mission is to support and sustain communities grounded in care, where community members share stories, build trust, honor values, and engage in practices that strengthen connection and collective wellbeing.
We strive to increase the capacity of individuals, groups, and organizations to build healthy relationships and to restore relationships in the face of conflict and harm.
We do this through mediation, facilitation, training, and coaching. We develop programs, models, and competencies that help bridge cross-cultural and other differences. And we design our services to respond to the needs of the diverse communities we serve, reduce barriers to participation, and reach underserved communities.
Our Core Values
Relationships: Fostering healthy relationships, communities, and institutional cultures rooted in dignity, respect, and self-determination.
Empowerment: Creating spaces and opportunities for volunteers, community members, teachers, students, and co-workers to develop, use, and share the capacity to transform conflicts and (re)build relationships.
Collaboration: Supporting participants in working together respectfully to address shared problems and to develop mutually agreeable and effective solutions.
Multi-partiality: Holding space in a manner that builds trust among all parties by recognizing the dignity, needs and interests of all individuals and supporting participants in mediations, and facilitated processes to determine their own solutions and agreements.
Equity: Seeking justice, self-determination, and equal power and influence for all. Implementing our Mission in a way that disrupts systems of marginalization.
Inclusion: Striving to ensure that our staff, board, and volunteers reflect the diverse communities we serve. Developing programs, models, and competencies that help bridge cross-cultural and other differences.
Access: Designing our services to reduce barriers to participation and seeking to broaden our reach to underserved communities.
Transparency: Communicating openly about our decisions, processes, and commitments to build trust, strengthen accountability, and ensure community members understand how and why we do our work. We communicate our processes and decisions through regular impact reporting.
Consent and Confidentiality: Treating information as a gift and responsibility. We obtain clear consent before sharing and protect the confidentiality of all participants to maintain safety, trust, and agency.
Land Acknowledgement:
SEEDS acknowledges that we are operating on the ancestral lands of the Ohlone people. We support the sovereignty of the Ohlone people by paying Shuumi Land Tax to the Sogorea Te Land Trust. To learn more, visit their website: https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/