Mediation

Mediation is a voluntary, confidential process where people involved in conflict are helped by a neutral third party (the mediator) to resolve their problems collaboratively.

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International

Since its founding TIDES has also worked extensively in a number of international settings that have included the Balkans, Africa, Asia and North America. These programmes work in close partnership with local communities and NGOs and are focused on capacity building, leadership training and conflict management.

The most recent international work has been through the delivery of a methodology for managing conflict in the community called Dialogue for Peaceful Change (DPC). DPC has been developed by TIDES Training in partnership
with the Oikos Foundation, the Ecumenical Association of Academies and Laity Centres in Europe, OIKOSNET and The Vesper Society in North America. Since 2006 we have delivered DPC workshops in Zimbabwe, Romania, Northern Ireland, Ghana, the USA and Canada.

http://dialogueforpeacefulchange.blogspot.com/

Examples of our international training work include the following:

  • Bosnia-Herzegovina – PRONI, Fall 2003 Work in Bosnia centered also around training of youth workers in reconciliation and group work organised in conjunction with PRONI.
  • Bosnia-Herzegovina – OSCE: Human Rights Department, December 2004 Conflict Management (delivered in partnership with the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford).
  • Georgia – OSCE: Human Rights Department, July and November 2005 Mediation and Negotiation (delivered in partnership with the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford).
  • Kosovo – Concern and Care International Work in Kosovo began in the Peja/Pec areas including a variety of Conflict Management training, Mediation and Therapeutic work. Design and delivery of the Conflict Management programmes was interlinked with the 'Do No Harm' policy of the region. Later visits included much more of the same work and the marriage of Conflict Management approaches with the Rights Based approaches.

In 2001 TIDES was contacted by Concern Worldwide to design a Conflict management programme in the Peja/Pec region of Northwest Kosovo.

This area suffered some of the worst violence of the inter-ethnic violence between mainly the Serbs and the ethnic Albanian communities. TIDES helped initiate a programme of training and mentoring for both local and international Concern staff to help support them develop some of the first "inter-ethnic" community capacity building programmes in the then UN [UNMIK] Administered Kosovo. This included key projects with and within the Serb Enclave of Gorazadavec. Within 18 months Concern were able to establish 5 programmes, which included income generation, women’s capacity building and youth projects. Concern period of mission finished at the end 2002. They were so impressed by these achievements that they developed a cross-over partnership with Care International to allow the project to be expanded and developed across Kosovo to include Prostina, Ghilane and Mitrovica. This project was also exciting asked to develop a harmonisation of the principles of RBA (Rights-Based Approach) and Conflict management.

The team that TIDES was training expanded from 6 to nearly 40 people. In 2004 TIDES carried out a Training of Trainers programme for key Care International staff to allow them to locally develop the training as part of a long community stabilisation programme between the majority Albanian community, the remaining Serb communities and in support of the UN in their task to help the 200,000 remaining IDP’s {Internally Displaced People] resolve their situation.

  • Macedonia – PRONI In collaboration with Swedish Universities, training of youth workers incorporated group skill, and reconciliation based work which was the core of the visits to Macedonia.
  • Sudan – German AgroAid Work with German Aggro Aid in order to create and maintain a Food Security Program. This included an introduction to Conflict Management, and referral to ‘DO NO HARM’ and RIGHTS BASED APPROACHES.
  • Pakistan – Concern Work carried out to create a 5 month training plan of intesive mediation training for workers in refugee camps bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In 2003 Concern Worldwide contacted TIDES to design a programme of Conflict Management to support their work with 80,000 refugees who are located in four camps on the Pakistan Afghanistan Border. These camps are located around the border town of Chaman in an area that remains both insecure and has suffered extensively from drought over the past four years. The pressures this brings to bear are enormous on both the Pakistan Government, UNHCR, Concern and its partners NGO’s in the area as well as the local communities and of course the refugees. Colin Craig and Mary Montague then designed a three stage-training programme which commenced in February 2004 and should be completed in June of 2004. The cornerstone of this training is intensive mediation training programme for 14 key targeted staff from Concern, UNHCR and the Guardians a local NGO working in the camps.