Objectives

The overall aim of Peaceworkers UK is to improve both the quality and quantity of civilian personnel working in the fields of conflict prevention, crisis management and peacebuilding. We believe this requires the establishment of transparent and universal standards of professional competency that can serve as benchmarks for quality performance as well as targets to be achieved through training and placement schemes.

Our interest in training is subsidiary to our interest in the assessment of competence, and we therefore approach training primarily as a means to prepare people for an assessment of their competence. From our point of view, training is only required where people do not already have the confidence to undertake an assessment. We would expect people with sufficient experience to skip the training and just do the assessment.

The objective of any training module we run is to help participants develop a few key skills that would be generally considered essential for working in a conflict prevention, crisis management or peacebuilding capacity. The assessment at the end of each module will determine, as far as possible, to what extent candidates possess those skills. The learning objectives for each course are therefore identical to the performance criteria that form the basis of the assessment that follows.

For a complete list of courses, please see our 2008 Timetable