Northwest Mediation Center

Northwest Mediation Center's mission is to foster, provide, and teach peaceful problem solving. 

Conflict is a natural part of the human experience and when addressed constructively, can even bring greater closeness and deeper understanding in relationships. However, everyday conflicts also involve heated emotions that can stall resolution, from disagreements with neighbors to dissolution of marriage. The thought of taking personal issues to trial makes it so much worse. 

Addressing conflict productively can be challenging -- but is possible -- especially with the support of a trained mediator. Fostering the skills to productively address and repair conflict is at the heart of Northwest Mediation Center's work, work strengthened through the engaged support of our community.  

Staff at Unity in the Community celebration, August 2023.

Why mediation?

Mediation is a voluntary, confidential process where parties come together to discuss conflicts in good faith with the support of a trained facilitator. This process highlights the common ground between parties that can promote a durable resolution to their conflict, as parties express their needs directly and craft any agreements.

In addition to mediation, we offer community education for individuals such as conflict coaching and conciliation. We offer mediator training for those who want to support community members in conflict as certified mediators in Washington State. We also offer a court-mandated Sharing the Children class that teaches separating parents how to effectively keep children out of the middle.

Our community

Since 1986, we have been helping community members discuss difficult issues and come to mutually agreeable solutions. We serve Spokane, Ferry, Pend Oreille, Lincoln, and Whitman Counties, and we also provide virtual mediation services.

As a community-based dispute resolution center, we are proud to offer sliding scale fees to assist neighbors experiencing financial need. Our volunteer mediators come from wide personal and professional backgrounds that infuse the process with broad expertise and experience.

Updating our Sharing the Children co-parenting seminar

Family separation is inherently traumatic, but when co-parents don’t get along or don’t have strong coping skills, the impacts can be devastating to their children. When parents are taught to recognize signs of stress in their children and age-appropriate interventions, they are better equipped to nurture and protect children during family separation or divorce – events that are recognized as Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs during childhood development. Research shows that cases of child abuse and neglect that occur during, and because of, family separation are preventable through parenting education that centers on child welfare and teaches adults productive strategies to address conflicts.

NMC provides co-parenting education classes designed to mitigate the traumatic impact of divorce on children in Spokane and the five rural counties we serve. The videos used in our Sharing the Children (STC) seminar teach parents how to recognize signs of stress in their children and communicate effectively to keep their children out of parental disputes. However, the videos are now outdated and we are in the process of re-filming them locally here in Spokane, including updated trauma science and modern technologies to keep students engaged with the content.

A monetary donation is more than a gift of resources, it represents a commitment toward a shared vision for a brighter tomorrow. At Northwest Mediation Center, we believe that our brighter tomorrow includes voices familiar and strange, coming together across perceived differences to rejoice in our shared humanity.

Together, we can foster peaceful communication and healthy conflict resolution in Eastern Washington.