paxUNITED

Mission:  paxUnited is committed to providing youth with skills and resources that will empower them to reach their full potential becoming healthy, caring and socially responsible individuals. What we do for our youth and adults is more important than what we do to them. paxUnited's programs provide youth and the adults in their environment with the life skills they need for peaceful conflict resolution. Peers Making Peace© is an innovative peer-mediation program that uses a preventive approach for handling conflicts both in and out of school. The program's goal is to improve school environments by reducing violence, assaults, and discipline referrals, and to consequently improve overall academic performance. This is accomplished by training teams of students to act as peer mediators on their school campuses. The benefits achieved through our peer mediation process are remarkable: Participation is totally voluntary. The needs of all parties are expressed in a non-threatening, familiar environment. Every participant is allowed equal time to present their understanding of the disputed issues. Emotions are expressed and anger is diffused. Conflicts are resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. Everyone's needs are met, no one is hurt, and relationships are improved. To date, paxUnited has been directly responsible for establishing over 5,000 programs in 28 states, impacting the lives of over 3 million children.