Roma Interview Transcript
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Date of Interview: Nov 9, 2010
Roma Zanders, Volunteer Mediator with the Dispute Resolution Center
Volunteers of America Western Washington
The following is a transcript of the full video interview. To see Roma's video interview, click here.
My name is Roma and I’m a volunteer with Volunteers of America and specifically the Dispute Resolution Center here in Snohomish and Island Counties. I volunteer as a Mediator, both for formal mediations and also as Lead Mediator for the Snohomish Courts here in Everett.
How long have you volunteered with the DRC?
It’s been almost 2 years, 2 years this spring.
Why do you enjoy volunteering with them?
Well a couple reasons. The first reason is DRC has given me a great opportunity to serve the community in a way that utilizes some skills that I believe that I have and it’s a way for me to give back. They make it easy for me to do that and again, do it in a way that feels meaningful to me. So that’s one reason, just enjoying the service to others. But the second reason isn’t entirely altruistic. I think it’s been a great opportunity to volunteer with the DRC because I’ve learned so much about myself. So when I act as a mediator, I always walk away from the sessions learning something new about myself. I’m just grateful for the opportunity to take these skills and use them in my personal life to foster more peaceful relationships.
The DRC has been terrific and for a number of reasons. One is they’re very professional. They’re also really well-organized. I love the fact that they give us volunteers several opportunities throughout the year to take some follow on training and all of that’s free of charge and it helps us develop our skills. So that’s a really great service. Just the fact that they’re efficient and they interact with us and they just make it easy to serve. And the other thing that is really great too is, specifically with the DRC, we’re given a lot of opportunities for different types of cases to mediate. That’s really terrific for someone who’s volunteering and also developing their skills – which they’re not just serving in one particular way. They get a chance to serve in many different capacities and that only increases our skills.
Here at the DRC for our formal mediations that last up to 4 hours, we’re able to mediate a variety of cases. A lot of them are parenting plans, sometimes they’re dissolutions of marriages, other times we’re asked to mediate small claims cases, neighbor disputes, parent teens, some elder disputes with families, some business to business disputes, dissolving a partnership is one I mediated last year. So each of them a little bit different skills and it’s just really nice to have that opportunity. Not just do one type of mediation, but to expand and serve in different ways. Plus, it’s a lot more interesting to be honest.
Certainly the different types of mediations bring in different types of people and that offers its own opportunities. Plus, when we mediate with the DRC, it’s always a co-mediation and there’s never a time where I leave that I don’t learn something from my co-mediators. So that’s a whole never level of opportunity for us. We are not doing it alone; we’re doing it in conjunction with a colleague. And again there’s just a world of opportunity to learn new skills and techniques from the co-mediator, as well as learning to interact with different people that we serve.
I’ve volunteered with a variety of organizations and they’ve all served the community and have served me in different ways. One thing I have found, without exception, that makes the DRC extraordinary is there high level of professionalism. They’re just very organized when they send out emails and communications as far as what mediations, in my example, are open and available. Just that efficiency makes it easy to volunteer. As odd as it sounds, I’ve volunteered in some organizations where there’s a lot of office politics I’ll say… and I’ve never sensed anything like that [here]. They all work together here and they work well with their volunteers and that just makes for not only an easy and enjoyable way to volunteer and serve, but just a nice dynamic group of people to work with. It just makes it that much more enjoyable when you open up your email and you open up your information from them and you just know that it’s going to be positive and straightforward and professional and efficient and… I just can’t speak highly [enough] about how much I appreciate that.
How have you, however large or small, felt that you’ve impacted someone’s life for the better?
Actually I think the way that most of us mediators, I’ll speak specifically for myself, but I’ve been speaking with a lot of other ones too, is simply in the fact of modeling peaceful communications – whether it’s between the two mediators themselves or just with the parties. Sometimes we get some high conflict situations and being able to stay calm and centered and peaceful and in this place where you can really serve them. I think that has been the biggest benefit for the people that sit down with us for those, up to four, hours. It’s a lot of the feedback that I get from them. They recognize that the last four hours with them have been stressful and they imagine it has been for us, but it may or may not have been, but they – many of them have said ‘thank you’ for just staying with them and staying calm and helping them see the larger issues. That’s really nice to hear. It’s something I can take back and use in my own personal life too. So it’s rewarding in the room and it’s rewarding when I go home too.
How has your volunteer experience been with the DRC?
The DRC has just been outstanding, just outstanding. For me personally, I’d waited for quite awhile to find a way to serve in the community that I felt would be authentic and meaningful for me and something that I would also continue to look forward to – instead of getting into something that maybe sounded good on the surface and then after a short time I might have had to drag myself to do it. So personally, I’ve found that mediating has been a great way to do that. It’s serving others, but it’s also a way that I have been able to gain a whole different skill set for myself and to use in my own personal life. Then to be able to work with this small staff here that is… again, they’re just … they’re professional and they’re kind and they’re straightforward. One of the things that I really love is there’s never, ever any pressure to mediate a certain amount of cases every month. To be here more or to go to certain, what they call in services or, training opportunities. It’s just really nice how the offer’s always there to be able to serve and learn and there’s never any pressure to do more. There’s some people, and maybe me included, there’s some people that can do a lot more work than they can other months and it really is nice that there’s not any repercussions because of that. And that just feels really good. I think from talking to other co-mediators that they feel the same way.
So it sounds like to me you’re saying that they will accommodate any volunteer’s schedule…
Yes, any schedule and again, that is really beneficial. My experience has been with other groups, and rightly so and for necessities purposes (you sign up for different time slots and they can count on you for certain times), and it’s just nice to know that they are a variety of time slots here where we could work during the day, or in the evening, or on the weekend. It’s completely up to us if we want… that we request to work with different mediations. If we want to do one a month, that’s fine… if we want to do ten a month, we can request that. So there’s lots of opportunities as far as time slots and amount of mediations that we can do. There’s a variety of service opportunities or ‘in service’ training opportunities where they make it convenient to attend and lots of ways to continue to foster and improve our skills and no repercussions if one that we can’t attend. That just feels really good.
Do you find you have to explain a lot about VOA? Or what VOA does? Or DRC?
I don’t feel I have to explain a lot about Volunteers of America. If anything it might be the Dispute Resolution Center and letting people know that’s a vibrant part of this community. And it’s one of those things that make sense if people haven’t really been in a conflict or haven’t needed to resolve a dispute. It’s probably a good thing that they’ve never heard of us, it’s one of those things where you hope no one ever needs your services, yet the truth is that some people do. But within certain groups, especially people I’ve none that have gotten a divorce, parenting plans are a big thing now for people to resolve through mediation instead of strictly through attorneys. So that community of divorced people, a lot of them have heard of the Dispute Resolution Center and the services it provides. So it takes very little to explain. Plus it’s very active in the court system. For anyone who’s filed or been a defendant in a small claims case in Snohomish and Island Counties you go through the process of mediation first. The judge asks you to try to mediate the case before you set up for a trial. So there are people that are familiar in the community at large with the services of the DRC because of the courts.
I think the best way to learn about the DRC is online, great website with lots of information. I know that from 2 sides it’s great to learn information. From the side if you have a dispute and need it resolved, this is a great place to come and great prices and really professional mediators if I do say so myself. I think it’s just a great tool for people that want to settle their dispute, hopefully, peacefully. The second option is even people that have been in mediation have become interested in learning more about mediation themselves. So it happens to have, in my opinion, top notch training services here. The training and the 40 hour mediation course are just outstanding services. People that have heard about mediation and want to learn can come to the DRC that way or maybe people that have used the DRC because they had a conflict, had an interest in taking the courses themselves. They can learn more about resolving disputes that way.
Cite this:
Zanders, Roma. Interview with Emily Paup. Dispute Resolution Center. Volunteers of America Western Washington, Everett. 9 Nov 2010.