Community Leadership
Community leadership is the courage, creativity and capacity to inspire participation, development and sustainability for strong communities. Community leadership means carrying responsibility for the well-being and improvement of the community. Community leaders are often self-appointed.
Are you a community leader? Are you interested in becoming one?
MIGRANT LEADER INSPIRATION
“When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.” Malala Yousafzai
Mediation in Communities
Community mediators offers constructive processes for resolving differences and conflicts between individuals, groups and organizations. Participants control the process and create their own alternatives to avoidance and destructive confrontation. They support participants in addressing their own and their community’s unique conflict needs.
Are you a mediator in your community? Are you interested in becoming one?
INTERESTING ARTICLE
Community Mediation Basics | RSI (aboutrsi.org)
How can mediation affect a community and the members of that community?
- Personal empowerment – individual learning, knowledge, confidence and skill
- Positive action – identify and involve groups excluded by poverty, health, race, gender or disability
- Community organisation – range, quality and effectiveness of community based groups
- Participation and influence – sense of belonging
Extracted from https://www.scmc.sacro.org.uk/sites/default/files/resource/COMMUNITY%20MEDIATION%206.pdf
Primary Competencies of Mediation Leadership
- Mastering the Context: Understanding the big picture
- Knowing Ourselves: Understanding our limits and skills
- Creating Vision and Communicating Meaningfully: Having an inspiring vision
- Empowering Others through Empathy, Integrity and Constancy: Building trust
- Realizing Intentions through Action: Turning vision into practical solutions
- Preventing and Resolving Conflicts through Collaboration: Preventing adversarial conflicts through skill and capacity building, using mediation
Read and learn
Click to read “Good Leaders Are Good Mediators” by Maria Simpson
While a US case study, the learning is transferable to EU. Maria has taught in the graduate program on Negotiation, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding at California State University Dominguez Hills for over ten years and was a mediator for the Los Angeles County Superior court for over 15 years. She has also taught communications and leadership at Antioch University Santa Barbara and conflict resolution in the mediation certification program at the University of California Santa Barbara.
SELF ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY
Open a new document/sheet of paper and try to answer these questions!
Are you someone who:
- Wants to improve your community? Elaborate
- Has something to contribute? Elaborate
- Doesn’t wait around for someone else to get the job done? Elaborate