Software Donation Improves Kids' Conflict Management Skills
Conflict is inevitable, so it is important to learn the skills to handle it at an early age. For the past 11 years, The Community Mediation Center (CMC) has been providing mediation and mediation training to resolve, manage, and prevent conflict. The organization reached over 400 students in the academic year of 2009.
One of CMC's long-running programs, Talk-It-Out, is a conflict mediation program developed especially for school-aged children. It utilizes a six-step process that works through conflicts in a sensible and practical way. The course relies on visuals to deliver its message to children in an age-appropriate manner.
For many years, CMC could not afford technology tools and had to rely on hand drawings. The hand drawings were not of professional quality and did not support the lessons as well as CMC had hoped. A donation of Microsoft Publisher through the TechSoup software donation program solved this problem. It increased the impact of CMC's materials by allowing the organization to create colorful and informative newsletters, brochures, and lesson visuals.
