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Coaching day is always satisfying

Ronald Bradbeer joined us yesterday and now the team is complete for us to coach and assess the participants over the next 3 days.

Today was the coaching day, when all the participants work in the same group all day mediating one case from opening to concluding. They all got to be mediator once throughout the day and one of the faculty team is with them the whole time, coaching them actively during the sessions and giving them private feedback at the end of their session.

It was so much fun working this actively with the group and we all felt at the end of the day that the participants had learnt a great deal today and developed their practise. We are in good shape going into the assessment days tomorrow and Wednesday!!!!!

Preparing for the work in Pakistan

The next trip to Karachi, Pakistan is coming up on Saturday with myself and my colleague Heather Allen leaving to begin two of the work streams early next week. We will then be joined by two more colleagues to help us finish to deliver the work streams over the final week. This is our fifth visit in a two year project for the private arm of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

The project has been to establish mediation as a means of resolving commercial disputes in the courts in Karachi. A mediation centre has been established, the Karachi Centre for Dispute Resolution (KCDR) and a group a mediators trained to the international standard of CEDR accreditation. The centre has begun to receive cases from the Karachi high and districts courts and resolve them through mediation.

This trip involves 4 different work streams:

• Mentoring of newly trained mediator: This involves observing actual mediation and providing feedback to the mediators on how to develop their practice
• A 6 day mediator skills training course: to train 18 new mediators in the skills ands process of mediation which will result in assessment for CEDR accreditation.
• Master trainers Course: 6 mediators will train as mediator trainers. These trainers will then shadow us on the mediators skills course above to gain practical experience in training delivery
• Developing an ADR Curricula for Universities.: A workshop to further develop the framework curricula drafted by CEDR.

All these work streams will be delivered in a 2 week period so it is is going to be an intensive period of work but will be extremely rewarding as well. Past trips have been interesting and rewarding and we have made very many friends in Karachi who I look forward to meeting up with again.

This trip has been 2 months in the planning , a stage which is crucial if delivery on the ground is to go smoothly. We are all ready now so the next post on this blog will be on Sunday from Pakistan.

Cheers

James

Starting out

I have started this blog with the intention of recording the many experiences I have during my work in many different countries to establish mediation in civil justice systems around the world.

I am one of these people who love what they do and feel privileged to be able to train others to resolve disputes in an effective and efficient way without recourse to the vagaries of litigation. The projects I work on assist many countries to incorporate mediation into their systems.

I look forward to sharing these experiences with this blog..... so the next entry will be about our preparation for a 2 week visit to Pakistan to deliver a series of training events.

Cheers James