Taking the Network's workshops one step further

by Katrin Uhl

As an intercultural community bringing together experts in the field of education for democracy, human rights and tolerance from various sociopolitical and cultural backgrounds the Network has been faced with the challenge of designing workshop models which are specific enough to be useful for educational work in the field, but at the same time general enough to be meaningful in more than one particular cultural context. Both workshops which were designed as a group collaboration within the Network, "The Power of Language” – with activities around issues of language, power, and democracy - and the Workshop on Evaluation of Education for Democracy, Human Rights and Tolerance, were created with this in mind.

The workshops offer a framework, a set of activities, which can be chosen according to the participants’ needs and interests. In order to make them meaningful for the work in a specific community, however, they have to be adapted to closely relate to the particular sociopolitical and cultural context.

A recent visit to South Africa by the members of the Network’s subgroup on evaluation provided an occasion to work on adapting both, "The Power of Language” and the Evaluation-Workshop. Hosted by the Network’s South African partner organizations U Managing Conflict (UMAC) and the Center for Conflict Resolution (CCR), the visit not only consisted of two two-day workshops, but also gave the subgroup members the chance for a first hand impression of UMAC’s and CCR’s work. Both located in the port city of Cape Town, the two organizations have been affiliated with the Network since 2001, adding a stronger focus on conflict resolution and human security to the Network’s agenda.

The evaluation-workshop has concluded its test runs and is now thoroughly developed to accommodate particular interests of participants. The Cape Town workshop with staff members from UMAC, the CCR as well as the Quaker Peace Center once again proved the importance of the issue of evaluation for the field and a need for more information and experience with this subject for practitioners. Both, the "Power of Language” and the evaluation-workshop tried to put a strong focus on issues relevant to the South African context.

In a country with eleven official languages, the power of language is present in many aspects, both positive and negative. Evaluation in conflict resolution work in South Africa, the facilitators of the evaluation-workshop learned, is closely connected to the process of monitoring - an issue that isn’t quite as present in the European or North-American context. A large concern is the role of donors’ influence on evaluations and the different interests on donor and NGO-side when it comes to determining the outcome of programs. How different interests can be moderated and how different stakeholders can be involved in an evaluation is an issue the workshop takes a closer look at.

The workshops in Cape Town provided a learning experience for both participants and facilitators. It helped to further develop the process of adapting the workshops for specific cultural contexts and, in the case of the evaluation-workshop, for different target groups as well: the idea to develop a second workshop model aimed at a more advanced audience and with stronger emphasis on evaluation methods and instruments will hopefully be pursued in the future.

Index: Podium

Tolerance Matters- International Educational Approaches
by Seamus Dunn, Karl Peter Fritsche, Valerie Morgan

Is Participation the key?
by Michael Seberich

Taking the Network's workshops one step further
by Katrin Uhl

The Center for Applied Policy Research

The Nonviolent Peaceforce
by Nicholas Mele