Author:

Keywords:

Herstelbemiddeling

Abstract:

Since 2005 the Leuven mediation service (Belgium) worked out a training and coaching project/ programme for volunteers. The underlying idea is to engage volunteering citizens in the mediation process in the capacity of experienced and skilled mediators. The project is unique in the Belgian context which is characterized by a strong professionalization of restorative justice practices involving both juvenile and adult offenders. In this workshop the experiences of this local programme will be taken as a starting point to reflect on and discuss some burning issues related to working with volunteers in a victim-offender mediation service. A professional mediator, two volunteers and a researcher of the Belgian training programme will count their stories against the background of a set of general questions that surpass their local experience. 1. What are the grounding values and purposes steering such volunteering programmes? To what extent do such programmes contribute to realising restorative justice values? 2. What does the facilitating presence of volunteers mean to the parties in conflict, to the volunteers themselves as well as to the professional mediators? How to understand these experiences of meaningfulness and relate it to the ambitions of the restorative justice movement? 3. How to organise the distribution of roles between volunteering and professional mediators in a way that guarantees high standard mediation practices? 4. Is there a limit upon engaging volunteering mediators in restorative justice practices? (e.g. not in murder cases of sex crimes)? 5. What other roles (than that of a mediator) could be designed for volunteering citizens in order to promote the ideas and values of restorative justice? 6. What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the existing volunteering programmes? The general aim of the workshop is to facilitate exchange of ideas, information and practices between existing volunteering programmes throughout Europe in order to further promote a well-considered implementation of volunteerism in restorative justice practices.