Lauren Abramson, PhD

Lauren Abramson is a psychologist who has worked with children and families in communities for the past 25 years. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Community Conferencing Center in Baltimore, Maryland and Assistant Professor (part-time) in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Lauren focused attention on Community Conferencing in Baltimore in 1995. She advances conferencing as a means of building social capital and collective efficacy on many levels, including:

• empowering individuals and communities to resolve their own conflicts
• keeping young people out of the criminal justice system
• mobilizing the existing untapped human assets in communities

The Community Conferencing Center (CCC) is a conflict transformation and community justice organization that provides ways for people to safely, collectively and effectively prevent and resolve conflicts and crime.

The work of the Community Conferencing Center has been recognized nationally and internationally for its use of conflict management strategies in a variety of settings, including criminal justice, education, community development and business.

Community Conferencing's efforts in Baltimore are unique - being the only broad-based conferencing program in a large American inner-city, with most services provided at no cost to participants. This work is groundbreaking for its multi-sector use of conferencing in highly distressed urban American communities.

The operating principles of CCC are:

• Conflicts present opportunities for learning, healing and transformation.
• People will generate creative and lasting solutions to their conflicts when everyone affected by a conflict is given a safe forum to tell his or her story and be part of the solution.
• Conflicts within communities are best resolved within those communities.

• Mobilization of existing assets and building community cohesiveness are paramount to quality of life.
• Violence can be prevented if people are given a safe forum to collectively resolve their conflicts.

The Community Conferencing Center also provides training, technical assistance, program development, and program evaluation services.

Conferencing has helped Lauren learn that while we can learn about conflict resolution through books and concepts, conflict -- and personal -- transformation happens through relationships and meaningful emotional experiences.