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Learn to engage conflict creatively and confidently.

Institute for Creative Conflict Engagement and Transformation

July 15 – Aug 9, 2015

This 25-day institute will provide skills and tools needed by anyone interested in creating peace and justice – at home, in schools, in communities, and in the world. If dealing with conflict leaves you wanting something more effective and satisfying, this institute is for you.

The program will include:

  • Understanding the difference between conflict engagement and conflict avoidance
  • Conflict analysis and mapping; identifying interests, power dynamics, and leverage
  • Compassionate Listening and Compassionate Communication – getting at the “heart” of the matter through empathic listening and effective communication of needs and interests
  • Comprehensive training in the Alternative to Violence Project (basic, advanced, and training for facilitators), which will prepare participants to do their practicums as assistant facilitators in order to become fully certified as AVP facilitators; interested participants will connect with AVP programs in their home areas to encourage complete certification and engage actively with local programs
  • Basic mediation – a 40-hour weeklong intensive in basic mediation skills
  • Restorative circles and restorative practices
  • Clearness committees
  • Forgiveness and reconciliation
  • Love and nonviolence as “forces” more powerful – engaging the powers.

There will be lectures, films, and large and small group discussion – and a lot of experiential learning through doing and reflecting, role-playing, and practice sessions.

With the tools and skills offered in this intensive program, you will be better equipped and more confident to address conflicts in ways that help us move closer to the beloved community that Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King challenged us to live into. Quakers traditionally have been leaders in conflict transformation, and many of these methods have been introduced and honed by Friends in conflict situations, from families to prisons to post-genocide refugee resettlement abroad. Rise to the challenge and join them!

Click to download the Conflict Transformation Institute application form.  Faculty bios are available here. For more information, please contact John Meyer, Education Coordinator, at 610-566-4507, ext. 129.