What are the effects and challenges of training for peacebuilding and non-violent action? This paper draws on experiences of the work of the Centre for Nonviolent Action (CNA) in the Western Balkans. CNA is a peace organisation driven by local activists that focuses on cross-border activities. There is no recipe for designing effective training but the content of training must match reality. The quality of the training depends on the trainer team’s sense of what is right and fair.
The aim of the CNA is to build cross-regional capacity. It works on the assumption that once trained, participants will themselves become agents of change, or “multipliers”. A number of lessons can be learned from CNA’s experience:
- Multi-ethnic teams give more credibility than teams comprised of members from just one national group.
- The effect of work can be multiplied if work is targeted towards professionals with the capacity to replicate values and approaches in their own work.
- Unrealistic expectations of training impact can be a huge source of dissatisfaction and disempowerment for the peacebuilding trainer team.
- Cross-community peacebuilding training helps participants to develop ways of understanding and dealing with these conflicts in a more constructive and just way.
- One-off training events can have huge impact for individual participants but are less likely to turn participants into “multipliers”.
- Training cannot change people or groups entirely but can provide the preconditions for this to happen by helping individuals to broaden their minds through new insights won in dialogue.
It is important for trainers to:
- Acknowledge how difficult it is to produce visible social impact and to create a nonviolent and just society.
- Create a safe training space but also to demonstrate space and capacity for challenge and insecurity.
- Adjust the training pace to those who are learning and acting in a faster dynamic, whilst maintaining an atmosphere of care and solidarity among the whole group.
- Create an open space for trainees at times to be able to introduce their own issues on the agenda.
- Act as equal partners in discussions on contents of the training when their input is needed.
- Be transparent about their values and how they are reflected in the organisation they represent and their relationship with different external actors such as foreign governments and NGOs.
