Practitioners in Conflict; Refreshing skills & creating strategies for change Course; 2nd to 6th November 2020 (Online)

This bespoke training is a joint undertaking between Coalition For Peace in Africa (COPA)  and Peace Direct (PD). It has been designed as a stimulating refresher for practitioners who are dealing regularly with the effects of conflict and violence. Among other things, the course will respond to the main challenges and questions faced by practitioners in the course of their everyday work. It will also explore building resilience especially during this time of COVID-19 and the different coping strategies including taking peacebuilding work online.

Target groups

Practitioners working in the fields of Peacebuilding, Peace Keeping Operations, Development, Humanitarian Relief, Human Rights and Post War Recovery in fragile contexts in different parts of the globe and in particular in Africa.

What the Course will do

1. It will provide participants with the opportunity to broaden and enrich their current methods of conflict analysis
2. It will provide an opportunity to understand conflict sensitivity more deeply.
3. It will enhance participants Capacity to learn continuously from their work, and to effectively monitor and assess impact
4. It will provide a range of ways of taking care of ourselves as practitioners, and increasing resilience
5. It will help participants to be innovative in ways of carrying on with their work during this pandemic, where there is new normal of doing things e.g. online learning.

To achieve the above, the course will respond to the following questions:

1. Conflict Analysis: How do we conduct real time conflict analysis so that the results are useful in informing programming?, How do we use some of the tools of analysis to determine where our programming strengths as organizations lies?, How can some of the tools of analysis legitimize our work at the community level and among our partners?
2. Conflict Sensitivity programming; What are the various Conflict Sensitive approaches to programming?, which approaches work best for our programming? How do we design our programmes with a conflict sensitive lens?, What is the co-relation between the ‘Do No Harm’ Principle and other Conflict sensitive approaches? Are these Approaches relevant in expanding our programmes?
3. Programming for results in Peacebuilding; Given the fragility of some of the operating contexts which makes it hard to get the desired results, the course will address such questions as; How do we design for results?, What is the emerging evidence that PB in fragile contexts has results? How do we determine impact in our PB projects?
4. Resilience; Because of the kind of environment peacebuilders operate IN, many unknowingly suffer from burnout and emptiness. This session will address how individuals and teams can practice self- care and increase their emotional resilience to stressful situations especially during these times of COVID 19.

Learning Methodologies

This year, this training will be online. The online learning infrastructure will be accessible and easy to use by all participants. All those participating will be required to have Zoom. Each day will comprise 3 hours of LIVE learning (2 hours virtual facilitation and 1 hour group and individual tasks). Learning times will be from 0900 to 1200 hours in the morning and in the afternoon from 1400 to 1600 hours. As far as possible, the training will still make use of the full range of participatory adult learning models including inquiry, case study analysis, individual and online group tasks and reflections from participants’ experiences. Everything will be focused on finding practical pathways and responses to real problems through an inspiring and hopeful process. All those who will successfully complete the course will be issued with a virtual certificate via email.

For more information, download the training prospectus here

To apply to the course, download the training application form here