NEW YORK, NEW YORK, June 1, 2017 – The AAA-ICDR Foundation® is now accepting proposals for its third funding cycle. Interested organizations or individuals should submit a 1-2 page Initial Description of Grant Request no later than October 13, 2017. Go towww.AAAICDRFoundation.org for process and forms.

The AAA-ICDR Foundation is funding twelve grants in its second funding cycle. The Foundation received ninety-two Initial Descriptions of Grant Requests. Led by its Grants Committee, the Foundation, after a careful review of all of the submissions and the presentation of full grant proposals, approved the following twelve grants totaling approximately $435,000 in funding:

• New York State Unified Court System Online Dispute Resolution Platform: $125,000 to fund multi-year pilot for court online dispute resolution (ODR) for consumer debt cases. http://www.nycourts.gov/
• ABA Fund for Justice and Education: ABA Free Legal Answers - $25,000 to provide low-income citizens access to brief legal advice via an on-line interactive web-site, utilizing pro bono attorneys. http://abafreelegalanswers.org/
• University of Maryland Training in Conflict De-Escalation and Management - $25,040 to fund training for Baltimore City School Police and other school staff. www.cdrum.org
• Research Foundation of CUNY on behalf of John Jay College: The Dispute Resolution in Mental Health Initiative - $24,998 to fund scalable mediation training for certified peer specialists to serve an underserved population of "peers" living with mental health issues. www.jjay.cuny.edu/disputeresolution and http://mhmediate.com/drmh/
• New York State Dispute Resolution Association - $25,000 to create tool kit to help schools apply for AmeriCorps grants to receive conflict resolution education. http://www.nysdra.org/
• Columbia Law School Research of Twilight Issues in International Arbitration: $25,000 to fund analysis and development of best practices for "twilight" issues which are not clearly substantive or procedural with global presentations and publication. http://www.law.columbia.edu/center- for-international-arbitration
• ArbitralWomen Unconscious Bias Toolkit - $25,000 to fund educational series and mentorship to promote equality, diversity, access to justice, and leadership opportunities. http://www.arbitralwomen.org/
• Minnesota State Office for Collaboration and Dispute Resolution and Dispute Resolution Institute at Mitchell Hamline School of Law 2017 Talk with Purpose: Using Dispute Resolution to Engage Communities and Foster Relationships for Constructive Change - $45,000 to continue funding a transformative project to produce qualitative change in the type of engagement currently taking place between dominant and non-dominant communities in Minnesota. https://mn.gov/bms/ocdr/
• Ohio State University Foundation on behalf of The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law’s Divided Community Project - $40,000 to fund a study that describes local ADR responses and planning initiatives to address controversies that divide communities and development of a Community Preparation Assessment Test tool for community use. http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/dividedcommunityproject/
• The Curators of The University of Missouri: Reasoning in International Commercial Arbitration: Comparisons Across the Common Law-Civil Law Divide, the Domestic- International Divide and the Judicial-Arbitral Divide - $25,396 to fund research on arbitral reasoning in arbitral awards. http://law.missouri.edu/about/
• Project Kesher: Training for Women in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine - $25,000 to support travel and training scholarships for female community leaders from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, for advanced mediation and leadership training, focused on promoting peace and interfaith/interethnic tolerance. www.projectkesher.org
• Mediators Beyond Borders International - Women in Peacebuilding: Enhancing Skills and Practice Training for women in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela: $25,500 for travel and training scholarships to enable women community leaders to complete four days of advanced mediation and community leadership training. http://mediatorsbeyondborders.org/

The American Arbitration Association (AAA®) and its international division, the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR®), announced the establishment of the AAA-ICDR Foundation in May 2015. Since that time, the Foundation Board: James R. Jenkins, India Johnson, John J. Kerr, Jr., Carolyn Lamm, Francis McGovern, Bruce Meyerson, and Board Chair Edna Sussman along with AAA-ICDR support staff have been hard at work in both the areas of grant making and fundraising.

The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, and is able to solicit donations and provide grants to fund a range of worthy causes that promote the Foundation’s wide-reaching mission, which is to support the use and improvement of dispute resolution processes in the USA and internationally, including:

• Fostering measures that reduce potential escalation, manage, and resolve conflicts.
• Expanding the use of dispute resolution processes tailored to the conflict.
• Supporting research, education and initiatives promoting high quality, efficient and fair dispute resolution.
• Increasing access to justice in and through alternative dispute resolution.
• Sharing expertise across diverse groups and cultures.
• Partnering with others dedicated to advancing the Foundation’s mission.

For more information on the AAA-ICDR Foundation, please visit www.AAAICDRFoundation.org.