Saturday 15 August 2009

Training on peace building, conflict resolution and club management was given to forgotten dairies peace brigade leaders in Ethiopia

Last week we have successfully delivered training on peace building, conflict resolution and club management to forgotten diaries peace brigade leaders here in bahir dar city, Ethiopia located on 560 far from our capital city Addis Ababa thanks to the small grant we I have been awarded from forgotten diaries.

The training was given by expert who has experience in providing training and event organizing more over volunteers of youth association and Green Ethiopia took important part to make sure that we delivered the training successfully.

30 selected students from 6 elementary and junior schools attended this Training and 40 % of the participants were girls, to minimize cost we used the meeting hall of one school to undertake the training, and it was given for 6 days from august 2-8, 2009.

At the program’s conclusion, participants were able to

Ø Identify factors that create conflicts

Ø Understand four basic behavioral styles and know how to adjust to each for conflict prevention

Ø Appreciate how cultural and background diversity affect interpretations of situations.

Ø Exercise listening skills taught in the program to improve the chances for open communication.

Ø Evaluate conflicts to determine if they can be resolved.

Ø Implement a procedure to resolve problems that have viable solutions.

Ø Seek third-party facilitators when solutions are not readily available.

Ø Identify possible negotiation outcomes.

Ø List the eight steps of the negotiation process.

Ø Understand and identify different behavioral styles and adapt as necessary.

Ø Apply techniques for successful negotiation by successfully answering case studies and participating in practice cases.

Ø Recognize dirty tricks and tactics.

Ø Demonstrate the use of successful concession making.

Ø Develop key management skills, including change management, time management, critical thinking, delegation, problem solving, presentation strategies, communications, strategic planning, and feedback techniques.

Ø Build trust with their peers

Photo: Trainees during group work

The methods of the training were lectures, group discussions, exercises and plenary session and much time was given to participants to allow them share their taught and fillings.

At the end of the training participants were grouped according to their schools where they come from and they scheduled programs to undertake public debates and discussion forums in their respective schools in addition to establishing peace brigade club in their compounds.

each school has 5 delegates and the delegates were gathered to select their chair person, vice chair person, treasurer and 2 school peace brigades out of 6 are going to be led by girls for the for a period of one year from now on, the selection of leaders was made in democratic and transparent way this is one of the means we have to show trainees that when they want to do something it should be democratic and the did it well.

We interviewed some of the participants at the end of the training whether their expectation about the training were met and they responded that they were able to know tools and techniques of peace building, club management and leadership and they hope that they will get technical and financial supports needed to launch those proposed initiative in their schools.

the next step of this project is organizing public debates and discussion forums in these schools in addition to recruiting members in the school and out of school communities for this purpose two important things will be done soon to properly manage these events the first thing is getting the next payment from Forgotten diaries since we utilized the payment of the project according to the plan and allocating volunteers of youth association and Green Ethiopia to assist the newly appointed peace brigade leaders in arranging the events.

Your comments are well come

Prepared by Amare Abebaw

2 comments:

d2dyi said...

Whoa this is great i have also started a Peace Club as the after math of my project, we can see how we can link these two youth groups and foster networking from there, i am thinking we can start an online Peace Pen club for these young people so they can share their experience together Nigeria/Ethiopia and lets take the Peace building clubs to another level what do you think?
by the way this is an awesome project and i love it
Ogaga Maxwell Nigeria

Unknown said...

Dear Amare Abebaw,
I am interested in peace clubs profesionally and would like to exchange with you. From the forgot dairies web page i did not get to know which organization you work for.
Can u kindly get in contact with me and send me your e-mail adress?
many regards
Karolina Santana