RESTORATIVE
PRACTICES
IN THE
COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY RESTORATIVE PRACTICE
Our Community Restorative Practice focuses on addressing conflict between community groups, allowing participants the opportunity to have a voice in the issues that affect them. This practice builds relationships and facilitates dialogue that fosters empathy and understanding, bringing a collective grassroots approach to problem solving in the community.
ARJAA acts as a facilitator to accomplish this work through a trauma informed, restorative practice lens using community dialogue and bridge building meetings. The goal is to create a safe space for dialogue that will educate, build understanding and empathy, and work toward shared outcomes, accountability and advocacy.
Restorative Community Dialogue Goals:
To build healthy connections and interdependence across diverse communities through understanding, collaboration, and a commitment to an equitable shared future.
To create and co-create safe, inclusive spaces for people in the street community to share personal and collective stories, challenge dehumanizing stereotypes, expand pathways to justice, and help shape public policy and street community programming.
To strengthen grassroots community capacity to navigate and work through complex community conflict in constructive and restorative ways.
What is Dialogue?
Dialogue is a process that uses communication to build relationships as individuals share their experiences around a common concern and work together to address the issues affecting them. Dialogue is most effective when participants listen respectfully, remain open to learning, and share their perspectives honestly. When successful, dialogue helps reduce division, strengthens a sense of community, and improves communication among all stakeholders.
What to Expect:
Restorative Community Dialogue is a guided process that brings people together to share experiences, build understanding, and explore ways forward around a common concern or conflict. Dialogue unfolds in several phases, each designed to support safety, respect, and meaningful connection.
Phase One: Getting Started
At the beginning of the dialogue process, our focus is on creating a shared intention among participants: to listen, learn, and engage with care.
This phase usually begins with an individual conversation or stakeholder interview, where we take time to:
Build trust and rapport
Explain the purpose and focus of the dialogue
Hear your perspective and experience
Review expectations and shared guidelines
Identify others who may need to be included in the process
This stage helps ensure that everyone enters the dialogue feeling informed, supported, and prepared.
Phase Two: Sharing Experiences
Once participants have a common understanding of the intention and guidelines, the dialogue moves into deeper sharing.
In this phase, participants are invited to speak about their personal experiences and how the issue has affected them. Facilitators ask open-ended questions that create space for honest reflection, such as:
What has your experience been?
How has this issue impacted you personally?
How are you coping with what has happened?
What is your greatest concern right now?
This phase is about listening with respect and beginning to understand the human impact of the conflict or concern.
Phase Three: Building Understanding Across Differences
As people share, it often becomes clear that experiences and perspectives may differ. In this phase, the group begins exploring both differences and common ground.
Together, participants reflect on questions such as:
How is this issue affecting our community?
How has it impacted relationships or how we work together?
Do we understand the history or causes of the issue differently?
What forces are contributing to the conflict or concern?
The goal of this phase is not to debate, but to develop shared understanding through respectful dialogue.
Phase Four: Moving Toward Collaboration and Next Steps
Once participants have had the opportunity to share experiences and build understanding, the dialogue can begin to focus on what comes next.
In this phase, participants may work together to explore actions, solutions, or pathways forward. Facilitators may provide the group with key questions ahead of time to help everyone feel prepared.
This phase is about collaboration, healing, and identifying constructive steps toward repair, improved relationships, or community change.