Conflict Transformation in Practice: Dialogue & Mediation (within the full-time course)

Who can register for this course?

The 5-day course is offered to practitioners of peace and conflict work, those who intend to work in the field, and are interested learning more about the complexity and dilemmas in the field. There will be a maximum of 18 participants.

Content

Dialogue and mediation are two of the most common means of preventing violence and addressing conflicts in a constructive manner. This course deals with the demystification of the dialogue and mediation as just techniques or skills but rather as an attitude or lifestyle. Therefore the course will focus not only on the skills needed to facilitate dialogue processes and mediation but on the fundamental skills and knowledge to work on a diverse and multi-faceted field of peace and conflict. The strengthening of the participants’ sense of self, the awareness of one´s own patterns, attitudes, behaviors, biases, as well as needs and limits, are core issues to the course, not only through a theoretical input, but also through the continuous encouragement of self- and group reflection.

The course will also explore issues of trust building, conflict intervention, and horizontal 'power with', relationship building. It is not meant to give clear recipes and instructions but rather to prepare the participants for inevitable 'mistakes', challenges, situations of confusion and unpredictability.

Key Topics

• Clarifying and acknowledging one’s own personal (and organisational) motivation for Dialogue and Mediation
• Getting to know and understand how parties in conflict may perceive outsiders
• Ethics of Intervention
• Understanding meaning and forms of: trust, threat, safe space, social roles.
• Understanding and becoming familiar with methods of facilitation, mediation, and dialogue.
• Accepting difficulties as given & inevitable, and anticipating and dealing with them.
• Understanding complexity of context and conflict levels, from personal to global.

Training approaches

• Reflection on exercises and personal state of mind/emotions are vital part of learning.
• “Power with” is shared in a group where trainers are not above participants, learning is experiential, focus is on participants rather than only on the topic.
• Nonviolence is a basis of any intervention, and part of an approach where everyone is respected as human being.

Contact person: Irene dela Torre (dela_Torre@forumzfd.de)