Early Settlement Center for Mediation

We had a great site visit and meeting at Early Settlement Center for Mediation with City, County & State sponsors. Pictured from left to right: Keri Fothergill, Sherry Langston, LeiLani Armstrong. Cheri Harvell and Phil Johnson. Photo credits go to Susan Johnson. Thank you to everyone for visiting our center.

Here’s the Agenda:

This year’s Annual Volunteer Conference promises to be a great one as we are celebrating 40 years of dispute resolution and our wonderful volunteer mediators. Early Settlement’s Annual Volunteer Conference will be held on Friday, April 28, 2023. Contact your local Director to RSVP. All volunteers are recognized and appreciated for their talents. This year’s keynote speaker is Megan Hunter whose expertise is dealing with high conflict situations.

Just a fun Friday evening with Kevin Sorbo AKA Hercules!

Early Settlement Mediation has had a real treasure in longtime talented and bilingual mediator volunteer of 22 years, Eduardo Vicente Mora. Eduardo will definitely be missed and is a hard one to lose. We just learned that Eduardo apparently collapsed at the courthouse on Thursday and was not able to be revived. He had a kind and empathetic way with people and settled many, many cases over the years. In 2014 Eduardo was selected as the Statewide Mediator of the Year for Oklahoma and he was not just a wonderful volunteer for Early Settlement Mediation. Eduardo volunteered and participated in many organizations and was generous with them also. He was also great fun and I will always remember his laugh. Once when many mediators were attending training in OKC, we all went out to Pearl’s, enjoyed seafood and laughed all evening due to his great storytelling and jokes. We love you, Eduardo. RIP, my friend!

The Annual Early Settlement Volunteer Mediator Conference wasn’t so “annual” the last few years due to Covid concerns, however, this year we FINALLY were able to celebrate the efforts of all of our volunteer mediators from all over Oklahoma! A triple header event was held in person on Friday, April 8th and Tulsa’s 3 terrific nominees were 2019 Michael Taylor, 2020 Ed Fariss and 2021 Dr. Norm Simon! So proud of ALL of our Tulsa volunteer mediators, but especially proud of our 2 that won Statewide Mediator of the Year awards—Michael Taylor for 2019 and Dr. Norm Simon for 2021! We could not settle nearly as many cases without their help and continued support. I honestly don’t know what we would do without them! If you have an interest and would like to volunteer, call me at 918-596-7786 as we should be having a training in June or July.

The mediation services we offer, highlighted in this piece from Channel 2, can help eviction cases be settled before they ever have to go to court. And it's a free service!

1,200 pending eviction cases are piled up in Tulsa County The number of pending eviction cases in Tulsa County has doubled over the past couple months since courts closed, according to Tulsa Housing Director Becky Gligo. To avoid a wave of evictions, Tulsa is offering free services to help landlords and tenants find a solution out-of-court.