Trust MEdiators

About Trust MEdiators

Conflicts happen every day, often in an intercultural context. These conflicts often arise because we don’t really know how to talk to or collaborate with people from different cultures. Imagine an open discussion in the classroom involving students and lecturers from different cultures: How many times did you feel that something went wrong or that students (or lecturers) representing different cultures clashed or misunderstood each other?

Mediation is a process in which a neutral mediator helps disputants solve their conflicts on a voluntary basis. We all associate mediation with court proceedings but learning from people’s interactions throughout human history, we see that mediation has been an effective societal tool helping to preserve communities and solve social conflicts. Different people play the role of mediator in community mediations (be it elders, neighbours, community leaders or student representatives). When mediation is conducted among peers it is called peer mediation. Whatever form it takes, every mediator needs to build trust with the disputants to ensure safe discussions and make sure that disputants perceive them as trustworthy.

You cannot learn how to become a trustworthy mediator (solely) from books. We believe that in order to effectively build trust with disputants, mediators (be they informal, community or peer mediators, or mediators in courts) should understand the informal aspects of trust which impact (for better or worse) trust building in and between different cultures. This is the so-called wisdom of the crowds. In order to collect this knowledge, we are turning to you.

This project is a Comenius Senior Fellow project funded by the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO).

Address

• Headquarters

  Den HaagZuid-Holland, Netherlands