This Youth Mediation Program is a proactive approach to helping young people and the communities they live in cope with the phenomenon of youth violence by training a team of 10 youths in the skills of conflict resolution.
The youths, aged 18 to 24, are then employed as mediators in targeted schools in the Bowness community. They offer on-call mediation to the schools, pass on conflict resolution skills to the students and provide public awareness presentations to the community.
The Youth Mediation Program |is unique in that it gives youth participating on the team a chance to make a positive impact on their communities while developing their own long-term employability. The youths chosen are unemployed and struggling to make the transition from school to the workplace. In the program they receive professional development in employment-related issues with extensive career exploration. The listening and mediating skills they learn are likely to serve them long after the program concludes in any life situation where imbalances of power surface, and the potential for conflict escalation exists.
