The SFCB, founded in 1976 and implemented in 1977, expanded to cover all San Francisco neighborhoods in 1986. SFCB was the forerunner of all later projects in the United States with a community-building objective. The SFCB focuses on conflict mediation as a means of rebuilding a sense of community and community control over the social and physical surroundings of neighborhoods. The SFCB panel consists of three to five trained individuals who live in the same community as the disputing parties. They meet openly with the disputants together and have no contractual, legal, or formal power or authority over the disputants or the dispute. Disputants voluntarily bring their dispute to be heard by the panel. The conciliation process facilitated by the panel encourages disputants to express to one another their feelings about the conflict before they get into negotiations. In the last phase, the panelists ask both parties in turn what they think would contribute to a fair solution and help them to find a specific agreement. This agreement, once developed, is summarized, written up, and signed. Concrete actions as well as promised behavioral changes can be and have been clauses in such agreements. This article provides data on the volume of SFCB activities, as well as evaluation information on community building and empowerment, volunteers as community members, service delivery to residents, and targeted and actual caseload. The article concludes with a discussion of the social diagnosis underlying the SFCB and such initiatives and the SFCB as a recipe for the problems diagnosed. Implications of the SFCB experiences for the development of a similar network in the Netherlands are also discussed. 17 references