I felt honored when somebody who is a Director of Peace and Development Center in Geneva asked me to give a short course in mediation to UN officials .  The course I gave in October 9-12, 2000 was for people who worked their usual daytime hours and gathered for evening sessions (16.30 -20.00).  According to the tradition of this institute no preparing the course could be required from the participants.

Thus, I had to squeeze a four week course down to a four evening course.  The first evening I asked the students to write an essay about their own ideas about mediation.  We discussed the different mediator roles and I introduced three steps that I proposed could be fulfilled in role-plays.
 

Each performance of role-plays was filmed by video camera and the films were usually discussed immediately.  All were unanimous that everyone playing the "mediator" needed to train his or her capacity to bring forward the tiniest concerns and the tiniest solutions the parties could possibly share with the other party.  All these findings were dealt with in a co-operative mood and the performances of the participants improved steadily.

The interest of the participants increased  every evening so that they asked me to extend the course with a fifth evening session, which happened to be on a Friday.  According to the Director of the Institute, Dylan Scudder, it is an unusual sign of the participants’ interest.

As the policy of the courses at the of Peace and Development Center in Geneva is not to trouble the course participants with examinations any possibilities of my getting a written feedback was excluded. At the  end,  however, I put  to everyone a general question: "What have you learned from this course?"  The most common answer was: "I have learned something about myself."

The participants  spontaneously expressed words of appreciation for  their empowering experiences during the course and confirmed it in e-mail correspondence afterwards. I have not yet got an answer to the question if they really have assimilated something of the techniques I tried to convey.  My efforts to get them to write about their practical experiences to use the Shared Concern method have been in vain.

Three months later, in January 2001, the Director of the Institute, Dylan Scudder, asked me to give a new course in mediation.  My reply was: I would be delighted  to -- if we could ask the prospective participants to do some preparatory studies before they were given access to the course.

Dylan Scudder is still pondering upon his answer.