“Community of Practice of dialogue facilitators Practitioner’s Exchange. Report on the side event organized by the Community of Practice of dialogue facilitators, with the support of ACCESS Facility”, 28 Jan 2016

The Community of Practice of dialogue facilitators (CoP) is composed of senior professionals located all over the world who use consensus-based processes to help communities, companies and governments engage constructively to find their way to rights-compatible, interest-based solutions to common challenges…The objective of the practitioner’s exchange was to strengthen relationships between facilitators, experts and organizational representatives dedicated to the evolution and expansion of the dialogue facilitation field, to exchange perspectives and reflect on the field of company-community-government facilitation, and to provide orientation for the CoP’s focus in the upcoming year…One of themes that came up in the conversation, is how difficult it is to find trained and experienced dialogue facilitators.  One of the reasons the CoP was established, was to identify these facilitators and put them on the radar…The session was also an opportunity to talk about some of the challenges faced by mediators.  One of these challenges is deciding what the boundaries of the negotiations are, and how to decide what to include, and what to omit…The session demonstrated an unmet desire amongst both civil society and companies for more training and knowledge in the field of company-community mediation.