Since 2002 the WEA have held many Principled Negotiation Skills course with groups dealing with community disputes.  This model of negotiation drawn from the seminal work of Roger Fisher and Bill Uri challenges the traditional way of conducting Negotiation and rather than win/lose it finds ways to build mutually beneficial agreements which gave rise to the name Principled Negotiation.

This was, and will be, a great asset to local communities, who now have within their groups a bank of trainers who will roll out initially, four Principled Negotiation Courses to empower local communities and negotiators.

Participants who moved on to the trainers programme, completed an intensive four days of delivery techniques combined with the theoretical delivery of the model.  This course is accredited at Level 3 and demanded a large commitment on the part of many of the already stretched community workers, at a time when Northern Ireland was also facing in to an Election. Whilst this was a challenge, they gave the course the energy and focus it demanded and I have no doubt that this will be a strong group of community based trainers who will disseminate their knowledge for the benefit of their communities. It is a strong indication of the commitment of communities to resolve disputes at local level, through a process of Negotiation which requires no involvement of a third party but rather seeks to resolve this with all stakeholders at the table.