Ms. Balderelli is former director of the Community Mediation Center, a multi-service training and mediation program of the Worcester Community Action Council, Inc. that has provided services to local courts, schools, and community organizations since 1986.

She has worked in the mediation field since 1985 when she was trained as a community mediator. She coordinated, at the district court level, a wide variety of cases, including assault and battery, malicious destruction of property, larceny, and disturbing the peace. Ms. Balderelli is also trained in family and divorce mediation and helped parents and adolescents resolve disputes concerning chores, school work, curfews, and respect. She also helped parents resolve custody and visitation issues. She served as coordinator of a peer mediation program at Burncoat high school in Worcester, MA.

Ms. Balderelli is a graduate of Worcester State College and is a member of the National Association of Community Mediation and the Association for Conflict Resolution. She lives in Southbridge, MA.

Jim Dolan has served as a sales engineer at the Stokes Corporation in Philadelphia and as the National Account Representative for the Penwalt Corporation.  He has worked in Marketing for the Klockner Company and created the Process Masters Company, a Manufacturer’s Agent for engineering, sales and service of machinery and technology for equipment manufacturers.  While in Philadelphia, Jim Dolan participated in the Washington marches for civil rights and anti-war movements.  His greatest satisfaction came from working locally on a Racial Crisis Committee and developing resources to end a slum-lord’s exploitation of citizens in a rental housing complex.
 
 His private and professional activities include terms as Board Member, President and Treasurer of the Westborough (MA) Historical Society and Treasurer/Financial Partner of the Northborough U&C Investment Club.  He joined the First Unitarian Church in Worcester in 1984 where he served as Chair of the Trustees of Parish Funds, served as a member of the 225thAnniversary Celebration Committee and presently serves as a board member of The Jericho Road Project.  He currently lives in Worcester.

Michael Langa is a native of South Africa and holds two masters degrees, in Religious Studies and in Psychology, both from South Africa-University of Westville and University of Natal. He has worked for African Constructive for the Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD), from 1998-2001. Michael has traveled extensively to African war-torn countries, including Zimbabwe, Sudan, Nigeria, and Zambia doing Peace Education. In addition, he worked with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, a court-like body assembled after the end of Apartheid. Anybody who felt they had been a victim of violence could come forward and be heard at the Commission. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from prosecution. Michael does consulting in the U.S. on Intercultural Conflict Management. He and his family live in Worcester, MA.

Over the past 30 years, John Paul Marosy has served as CEO of leading healthcare organizations, most recently with VNA Private Care, an affiliate of the Visiting Nurse Association of Boston. He is president of Bringing Elder Care Home, a training and consulting firm that works with employers and community organizations to promote elder care/work balance. He has written two books on the subject He holds a masters degree in Urban Affairs from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies from Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City, NJ. He is past president of the Massachusetts Gerontology Association and a member of the National Speakers Association.

He is a member of the mission council of the Agape Community, a lay Catholic residential community in Hardwick, MA dedicated to peace education with a primary focus on colleges and universities, and including an ecumenical and interfaith embrace. John Paul is also a member of the Faith Into Action committee at St. George’s parish in Worcester, MA. He, his wife Donna Huron Marosy, and their son, Martin, live in Worcester.

Marjorie Ropp is currently Database Manager at Abby’s House in Worcester, MA.  Her past employment includes Information Systems Consultant at Clark University, Education Technology Assistant at the Ecotarium in Worcester, and owner and manager of the Computer Learning Center of Memphis, Tennessee.  She has an M.A. in Speech and Language Pathology from Memphis State University.  She is an active member of the First Unitarian Church in Worcester having served as head of the Lay Leadership Council and the Peace Group.  Since 2004, she has been active in assisting Worcester’s Sudanese refugees through the Sudanese Education Fund and Friends of the Sudanese organizations based in Lincoln, MA.  She has three children and three grandchildren and lives with her husband Paul in Worcester, MA.

Paul Ropp grew up on a small Mennonite family farm near Normal, Illinois in the 1950s. He graduated from Bluffton College in 1966, and went on to graduate school at the University of Michigan where he finished his doctorate in Chinese history in 1974. He has taught Chinese history at Clark University since 1985. He is active in the First Unitarian Church of Worcester, and retains his lifelong interest in nonviolence as the most effective tool for conflict resolution and the promotion of social justice and positive social change. At the First Unitarian Church, he serves on the Peace and Justice Committee that is chaired by his wife, Marjorie. Paul and Marjorie are also active in the Friends of the Sudanese, a support group for Sudanese refugees in the Worcester area. He and his wife, Marjorie, live in Worcester, MA.

Claire Schaeffer-Duffy is a graduate of the University of Virginia with a BA in Political and Social Thought. In 1987, she and her husband, Scott, founded the Saints Francis and Therese Catholic Worker in Worcester, MA, a lay community that offers hospitality to men and women in need and works for peace and justice. Claire began writing for the National Catholic Reporter in 2000. She has reported from Bosnia, Afghanistan, India and Haiti and has received several awards from the Catholic Press Association for her writing. A founding member of the Central Massachusetts Coalition for Peace and Justice, she has helped organize Worcester's Middle East Film Festival for the past three years. She and her husband, Scott Schaeffer Duffy, are the recipients of the Paulist Center's 2007 Isaac Hecker Award for Social Justice. They are the proud parents of four children.

Michael True, is professor emeritus, Assumption College, and the author and editor of twelve books, including An Energy Field More Intense Than War and The Nonviolent Tradition, 1995, and People Power: 50 Peacemakers and Their Communities, 2007. His essays, reviews, and poems have appeared in scholarly and general periodicals, including Commonwealth, America, New Republic, The Progressive, Boston Globe, Harvard Divinity Bulletin. A native of Oklahoma, he is former chair, International Peace Research Association Foundation (IPRAF), and former co-chair, Consortium on Peace Research, Education, and Development (COPRED).

A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and twice a Fulbright Scholar in India, Michael True has taught at twenty colleges and universities in this country and abroad, including Duke University (where he completed a doctorate in American literature), Columbia University, University of Hawaii, Nanjing University and Nanjing Normal University (China), Utkal University, Bubaheshwar, and University of Rajasthan, Jaipur (India). The father of six children and ten grandchildren, he lives with his wife, Mary Pat Delaney True, in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Martha Yager

Martha Yager has worked for American Friends Service Committee since 1993, first in New Hampshire and most recently Southeast New England. Much of her work has been addressing the roots of war -- the social and economic injustices that breed the violence and anger at the root of conflict. More recently, her work has included efforts to end the violent interventionism of the United States government.

Martha Yager earned a BA from George Washington University and a Masters of Divinity from Yale Divinity School.