Calling peacemakers for restorative justice

Sheena

“The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds.” The Dalai Lama

One of our beautiful recent trainees posted this on my Facebook wall last week and it got a lot of likes, which to me speaks of humanity’s yearning for healing and restoration.

It was also such an honour for me to be tagged in this particular quote, because it points to my own passion: peacebuilding and peacemaking through non-adversarial processes like mediation and corporate and community dialogue.

ADR Network SA is a South African agency engaged in the practice and the teaching of alternative methods of dispute resolution. When I founded this agency a few years ago, the focus was on settlement of legal disputes outside of court and through the lens of restorative justice. As it has grown and gathered momentum, the processes we practise and teach are finding application in families, schools, workplaces and communities where we are helping individuals, families, organizations and communities to shift away from combat-style and punitive methods of dispute resolution to more restorative and healing methods of dispute resolution. I personally frequently venture into dark, desolate places where the general feeling is that things are not capable of resolution and that restoration is impossible, and I see the impossible happen.

Bridge-building, solutioning and developing creative thinkers

What I do and what we teach, is about bridge-building (often across impossible divides), it is about solutioning and the development of creative thinkers, rather than merely critical thinkers.

Whether you are passionate about helping others resolve conflict, or you wish to gain personal skills for application in your family life or work-life, we often get feedback after our programs of radical life-change for the better.

Our next program runs in Cape Town from 7-11 April 2014. To receive an information pack on ADR Network SA-accredited Alternative Dispute Resolution Training in Mediation, Arbitration, Dialogue and Restorative Justice Peacemaking, please email adr@mediatorsa.co.za or send a text to 0614915314

Sheena St. Clair Jonker
BA (Law) LLB (UKZN)
ADR Network SA and Access to Justice
www.adr-networksa.co.za

Alternative Dispute Resolution, Restorative Justice Peacemaking, Human Rights Activism
Mobile: 0614915314
Twitter: sheena_ostjon
Facebook: Sheena St. Clair Jonker

By Sheena St Clair Jonker