Peacemaking

Peacemaking arises necessarily through the OCP mission to promote “personal growth and well-being”. It follows as a natural outgrowth of efforts to further these aims–but it is also required for creating a place where these aims can be furthered. And by creating such a place in the north end of Harrisonburg, peacemaking is fostered throughout the broader community and surrounding area.

A Warm Meal

Day-to-day OCP offers people of all types, and in all manner of situations and predicaments in life a place to rest a spell, take the load off, and enjoy three homemade meals a day–all without the expectation of giving back in any way. Access to a free community phone, free internet, recreation, and advice on life issues almost complete the picture. In short, anyone entering off the street can get his life needs met.
hot soup
Most powerful of all, is the chance to participate in a forming community–actually to contribute to its formation through volunteer effort. This means developing relationships and friendships in a warm, safe, and (somewhat) stable environment–and having a good bit of fun along the way. Many have actually found meaningful employment either at OCP itself or as a result of volunteer.

Often people who find themselves at OCP’s door feel they have nowhere else to go. Perhaps criminal records limit their employment, transportation, and residenceoptions. Maybe probation and parole place additional restrictions. With the stability, warmth, nutrition, and access to services OCP provides, not only are the lives of these participants enhanced but so too is community well-being. Decreases in the incidence of crime, violence, homelessness–and all the related health problems–may be difficult to quantify, but every reduction helps all.

Substance Abuse

So much of crime, domestic strife, homelessness, and health problems find its root in the abuse of substances–i.e., alcohol, street drugs, and misused medicines–that OCP makes as one of its very few hard and fast rules a no alcohol/no illegal drug policy anywhere on its grounds. Those discovered with these substances can be banned from the property, and for increasing durations for subsequent

empty alcohol bottles

offences. Those banned multiple times face a review process for proper re-entry into the community.

The misuse of pharmaceuticals is a major issue yet to be addressed specifically (except perhaps in the Substance Health Initiative). The fraudulent calling of emergency services (911 rescue) for the sole purpose of getting drugs from the hospital to abuse or sell–has been drastically reduced, at least from the OCP address itself. This has been done through moral suasion, mainly, but also by raising community awareness of the issue.

Recovery

A Narcotics Anonymous group has met every Saturday at noon for sometime. An Alcoholics Anonymous meeting has been added more recently Wednesday evenings. Additionally, a Friends of Recovery group has been founded with post-breakfast meetings during the week which seeks to apply Christian principles to bringing a recovery message of hope to a broader community.
These efforts reflect the deep OCP commitment to treating substance abuse directly while an actual recovery community grows around it. The impact on personal growth and community well-being for those who participate directly, with likely reductions in crime, domestic troubles, homelessness and health problems for the larger community is potentially significant.

a.a. meeting

Mediation

A consistent, tried-and-true feature of OCP peacemaking efforts in support of the mission has been mediation. These sessions tend to be run by the director, who is also founder and pastor of Early Church. They involve the accused and aggrieved parties and serve as a safe place for differences to be resolved. The results can be remarkable for those who agree to go through the process (so to those who would rather modify their behavior than go through the process).

Prayer

Opportunity and encouragement for group prayer abound, from early morning to late at night. Pre-breakfast a scripture reading takes place. All who participate in any of three meals throughout the day are asked to hold hands and say what they are grateful for. At any time of day, those so inclined may request special prayers for any arising need. Taken together this prayerful attitude, and willingness to participate on the part of so many, greatly advances peace in the community-though no mere mortal might say exactly how or why.

“Do Policy”

A “do policy” is preferred over a proliferation of “don’ts”.  Simply saying “Don’t!” tends not to work for a number of reasons:
  1. People rebel when told not to do something–especially the crowd that frequents OCP, and most especially alcoholics and drug addicts.
  2. Telling someone not to do something does not address the underlying need, energy, desire, that results in the behavior.
  3. A long list of rules is not only difficult to remember but it makes people resent the organization laying them down.
  4. Signage necessary to inform of the rules–and their associated penalties–tends to be unattractive and irksome (unless carefully conceived and worded).
  5. Somebody has to enforce all of the “dont’s” – who will that be?
  6. Community members themselves become cops and informers, snitching and tattling on each other.
The biggest reason of all, though, for avoiding a system of externally-imposed “dont’s” on people is that it encourages them to look outside themselves for moral guidance rather than developing and learning to act on their own internal moral code.
A “do policy” simply means giving people a course of action that is encouraged, one that releases the offending behavior safely and as inobtrusively as possibly, while also releasing the underlying energy that motivated it. Examples include not saying “No smoking anywhere on property!”, but providing instead approved places to do so with attending guidelines. This policy also informs the wording of any signs meant to guide community behavior. Encouraging them to do what is acceptable and helpful other than shouting at them what not to do seems best for maintaining the peace.

Good Citizenship

Ideally the focus for our community increasingly would be on becoming and acting like good citizens.  By each of us doing so we collectively contribute greatly to peace in the community, not to mention personal growth.  The ideals of good citizenship, at least as far as we at Our Community Place are concerned, can best be summed up in the following mottoes . .
  • Long Form: “We respect one another, keep the place clean, and help out when we can.”
  • Short Form: “Show respect. Clean up. Help out.”

Discussion on these mottoes at the staff, community, and board levels are ongoing.

Sponsors

Borrowing a page from the recovery community book, we feel it best that at least one person (from staff or community) step forward to ‘sponsor’ the individual we are seeking to help. This sponsorship does not involve money, or even responsibility for the behavior of the individual: it’s just a way of focusing and organizing related efforts, which would likely dissipate quickly in the OCP environment if left unguided.  It’s also a way of ensuring enough interest exists on the part of a responsible person to undergo the effort at all.

Watch

To maintain vigilance on the no-alcohol or drugs policy, keep an eye on other troublemaking on the property. But mostly to promote a sense of safety both for OCP and the broader community – a watch modeled after the Guardian Angels has been proposed. This approach founded in the toughest New York neighborhoods, has greatly reduced crime in public housing projects, while making peaceful community possible. This idea has yet to be fully applied at OCP but arrangement has been made with a “motorcycle ministry” to help patrol certain areas.

The idea is not to create a mini-police state, or to become dependent on enforcement to make the community work. Rather, it is to find a kinder, softer way to ward off the worst players, or at least help them to reform, so that the greater community can best enjoy the benefits of OCP.

Individuals

At times, certain individuals arrive at OCP who appear not to be taking the overall benefit of the place quite as readily as others. Their unchanging nature serves to threaten not only the peace and growth of others, but the actual ability to create a community that allows others to receive the help they need.  OCP has a right, and even a responsibility, to address these individuals differently–and directly–both for their own good and for the good of the community. A framework for generating an individual approach to each case can be found here.

Media Reports

For more on how OCP affects the community please see related media reports.

Promoting personal growth and community well-being

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