Oikosnet Africa: Pre.assembly DPC workshop in Ghana

The

Ramseyer Training Centre in Abetifi hosted from 26 - 29 November 2008 the workshop included as a pre-event before the General Assembly of ACLCA. The training team - Jaap vand der Sar, Igeme Katagwe, Iulia Picu - introduced 26 participants from all over Africa, members of ACLCA, to the content of Dialogue for Peaceful Change, with emphasis on aspects like communication, models of understanding human behaviour when conflicts are arising or present – as well as different possibilities of dealing with conflicts. Quite some time was spent on mediation, both formal and informal.Through experiential learning, the participants were led into becoming aware of their almost instinctive reactions in conflict situations and understand that they could bring their own experience and knowledge as a key-resource to the workshop.The reactions, both in a verbal round in the last plenary session as well as on paper, indicated that participants recognised the patterns, as they were taught. There was an overwhelming positive response and requests for future training to be held in other centres.

"On my part what I found striking especially from participants is the avalache of requests to hold DPC in their Centers. Two ladies from Cameroon were emphatic and made it my farewell message that I should arrange a DPC workshop for francophone Africa. I spoke to the Francophone representative, Dr Pascal Foussou, who was excited about the idea. In a nutshell life in Africa is bridled with types of conflict that can have social disruption on unwanted scale. So DPC training with its emphasis on mediative skills is appropriate. With Africa we have to widen the part of mediative behaviour because of the latent conflicts that are on the rise regarding different enthnic communities"

Igeme Katagwe

From the DPC blog