We defined who the community is and how we could match what they wanted to get to what we offered. We trained mediators in mediation skills and also in the meaning of quality and how to apply it to mediation work. We questioned the notion of impartiality, which means being on no one's side. In the context of social justice, we saw this as a form of colluding with the status quo, disenfranchising Black people and members of minority communities. For example, it is the norm to give eye contact to someone who is speaking.
Mediators tend to look only at the one who is speaking.
We had to teach mediators to stay in eye contact with everybody in the room. Otherwise, for instance, in an interracial conflict, with a White mediator, if the mediator only maintains eye contact with the speaker - while the White party is speaking, the Black participant may feel there is some collusion taking place. The rest had more eye contact with the White party. We saw that the mediation process had to include exploring the impact of oppression on the dispute, in ways that recognized and empowered the oppressed. That involved holding separate sessions with our Black and White mediators in which each group could explore its commonalities and differences.