News

In April 2016 our “First ADR Kit” strategic partnership journey began. Different representatives of 5 partners – Estonia, Italy, Norway, Poland and United Kingdom managed the first kick-off meeting of First ADR Kit strategic partnership. It was the first step of the long-term project that is going to last for 2 years, in which we will develop new tools of teaching mediation in youth projects.

During the first meeting the founders of the strategic partnership negotiated a lot in order to plan the partnership for the next 2 years, set up the deadlines and the dates of future activities, managed to create the structure and strategy of the work, managed the communication and teamwork, came back home with new ideas, motivation and hope to keep up with such a good work.

The partnership project is aimed at creating new educational methods of teaching Alternative Dispute Resolution (mediation, negotiation, conciliation, dispute boards) with the use non-formal education tools.

Project is dedicated to three target groups. First is a team of 20 youth trainers who participated and will participate in intense training on the topic of Alternative Dispute Resolution delivered by professional mediators and conflict managers. Second group consists of youth leaders and young professionals who will participate and evaluate the training courses developed and delivered by the youth trainers. The third group includes partner organisations, professional ADR institutions, educational institutions, stakeholders active on the labour market, other interested individuals.

The idea of the project is that ADR trainers will pass the knowledge about ADR, and youth trainers will develop new methods and tools for teaching young people about mediation. Participants will conduct research on ADR service and education, prepare new workshop scenarios combining ADR.

The project is financed by European Commission within the framework of Erasmus+ Key Action 2: Strategic Partnerships in the field of youth.

After the Kick-off meeting each of the partners started to work on their parts of the structure. Their task was to make the desk research on Alternative Dispute Resolution Education in their countries, explaining the current situation, usage and effectiveness of ADR.

After period of preparation and Kick-off meeting it was time to gather the national group and get ready for the project activities. The first step was meeting with each other and sharing information about the project. We were introduced to the outcomes of Kick-off meeting and what was happening on the meeting during three days. It was the first step of our long journey of mediation. Enriched with power and motivation we went to England, to the lovely town of Worcester, where we participated in the Training Course “First ADR Kit” from 1st until 8th of October 2016.

The main aim of the training course was to equip youth workers with competences related to Alternative Dispute Resolution, with special focus on mediation and conflict resolution skills. As participants we had an opportunity to engage in a series of simulations and role play exercises and practice how, as youth workers and youth leaders, we can deal with real conflicts in our everyday lives. To achieve this aims and make the process of learning more interesting and closer to us as youth workers, trainers were using different working methods.

They have included a mixture of typical non-formal education methods, focused on individual and group exercises, discussions, simulations and exercises which ensured gaining skills and competences in field of mediation and conflict resolution. The training course was focused mostly on practical tasks which allowed participants to show not only skills in field of Alternative Dispute Resolution but also other types of talents and skills. Even though we were working hard on building our mediation skills and competences, there was still time to enjoy the beautiful surrounding of Worcester and to have relaxing and enjoyable time with other participants.

As every good thing needs to come to an end, our time in Worcester also ended but it was only the start and first stair that we took to climb up the mountain of ADR. After coming back to Estonia we have started with dissemination process of the project that is considered of many activities. We made a structure of our dissemination activities that included uploading photos of the project, writing the article, making Instagram account, writing daily tips about mediation and conflict resolution that will be published on the website of ADR and preparing workshops to share knowledge and involve youth workers from our organisation to work further together.

The aim of OUR DISSEMINATION is to inform the youth workers about mediation process, share gained knowledge, create a working process for implementing ideas.

We have already made the scenario for our  workshops and we are ready to share it with you. After negotiation we have decided to manage several activities. The first one is “Introduction Workshop about Mediation”, where we will share our knowledge about the mediation generally, create the tool or list of advices and involve the youth workers of Active Club in the First ADR kit; the second one is “How to be Mediator”, where we want to manage to explore/develop detailed structure of mediation process and the role of mediator deeply. The final stage will be trying tools of teaching mediation, share the knowledge and implement our mediation skills on the future youth workers in age between 15-18 y.o. As the additional task we want to translate terminology of mediation and conflict resolution to the language of youth work so we can implement it in future work.

The “First ADR Kit” Training course will have second part that will be held in March 2017. in Italy. During this second Training Course we will gather all together again and work deeper on everything gained during the first Training course in addition with the newcomes and successes of dissemination process.

This is only the start of our way to rock the ADR mountain! 🙂

Author: admin

Leave a Reply