ORANGE — The North Quabbin community gave thanks to two longtime Quabbin Mediation leaders this week as they begin their retirements following decades of work in conflict resolution, mediation and active bystander training.

Executive Director Sharon Tracy, who founded Quabbin Mediation in 1995, and Training Director Susan Wallace, who joined in 2000 because of a passion for teaching conflict resolution skills to children, were both recognized. Tracy and Wallace received citations from aides to state Sen. Jo Comerford, state Rep. Susannah Whipps and U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, as well as National Commander’s Challenge Coins for their organization’s work with veterans.

Eladia Romero, representing McGovern’s office, remarked on Tracy’s passion for Quabbin Mediation’s work.

“That passion and dedication is what she’s been bringing to the North Quabbin for 30 years. … She’s done that so well for so long,” Romero said of Tracy. “I just marvel at how you are always so calm and collected.”

Leah Wing, a legal studies professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, echoed this sentiment.

“What you have given is such a tremendous gift,” Wing said. “I am sure there are tens of thousands of lives who have been touched.”

Established in 1995, Quabbin Mediation is a nonprofit known for its work in conflict resolution and its Training Active Bystanders program, which began in 2007. Over the years it has expanded to offer services across the state and even internationally through virtual trainings.

“We’d been doing peer mediation in the schools, but it was clear there needed to be something more in this region, the North Quabbin,” Tracy said of starting the Training Active Bystanders program, citing a statistic claiming that the North Quabbin had the highest level of interpersonal violence in the state, controlled by population.

“And then this incident happened over in Turners Falls, where … two kids in high school were having a rivalry, and they were going to meet after school,” Tracy continued. “One beat the other to death with the baseball bat.”

After that tragedy, Tracy and Wallace created the Training Active Bystanders curriculum and piloted it at Athol High School and Ralph C. Mahar Regional School.

“We see mediation and conflict resolution and active bystandership on a spectrum,” Wallace explained. “You go to the far left of the spectrum: active bystandership is about people intervening when harm happens initially. It’s not about resolving conflict, but it’s about stopping the harm. Conflict resolution, if you move to the right on that spectrum … is about when two people have a disagreement … and they both have a capacity to resolve it between the two of them. … And then mediation, if you move a little bit further to the right on that spectrum, is when … people have a conflict and there’s not that ability by the parties to solve it themselves [and] they need some help.”

Also in 2007, the nonprofit added Veterans Mediation. The program began when Tracy got a call from a veteran seeking mediation and she felt the services she could offer were not sufficient.

“I come from a multi-generational military family, and … civilian culture is very different from military culture,” Tracy explained. “And if we had people who were veterans, who knew, who were part of the military culture, who were mediators, it’d be so much better. If I could have told this guy, ‘Hey, I’ve got somebody who’s a mediator and they’re a veteran and you need to talk to them,’ it would have been much more effective.”

Since then, the nonprofit has trained more than 1,000 veterans in mediation statewide, according to Tracy.

To thank them for their work with veterans, Harvey Weiner, past national commander of Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America, gave National Commander’s Challenge Coins to both Tracy and Wallace.

“Veterans Mediation is a godsend. Soldiers are taught — how do you settle your disputes? With violence. And when you come back into society, you don’t have the skills you need,” Weiner said, adding that the organization’s work has helped bridge this gap, offering support for a vulnerable population.

In her retirement, Tracy said she hopes to dedicate more time to her activism work with Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution. She said she wants “to work against the rise of fascism in this country” and she is particularly concerned about Project 2025, a collection of right-wing policy proposals for if Donald Trump wins the presidency.

Tracy also hopes to spend more time working with her husband on his nature photography and promoting his books.

Meanwhile, Wallace said she’s looking forward to having downtime in retirement.

“My plans are to not have any plans right now,” Wallace said. “I have spent the past 24 years organizing and I’m not going to organize right away.”

Stephanie Hsu and Lilly Fellows have been named co-executive directors to lead Quabbin Mediation into the future. They plan to pivot the organization’s focus to primarily active bystander training, though they will still be connecting people to mediators. HomeFront Strong will take over Veterans Mediation.

“When [Tracy and Wallace] approached me and asked me if I’d be interested in becoming the executive director, I was … honored and thrilled,” said Hsu, who has been involved with active bystander training since 2017 and has been program coordinator since 2022. “But I also knew that I didn’t want to do it alone and that Lilly was the person I wanted to share the role with.”

Hsu and Fellows plan to maintain the same curriculum for the Training Active Bystanders program, but hope to expand its reach.

“The main goal of the transition is to maintain the fidelity of the program, because Susan and Sharon have built such a strong foundation and have put so much time and energy and love into it,” Hsu said. “But what we hope is that we can get it out there to more people. … Active bystandership is important because it builds a base of values that creates a community that is supportive of one another.”

Wallace said she’ll remember her time with Quabbin Mediation fondly.

“It was wonderful to work for the organization,” she said. “We had a lot of ability to be creative and forward-looking, and it was a wonderful experience for me, and there were a lot of people who helped to make that happen, including all those kids who got trained. They were inspirational.”