The Mission of the Training Committee

The Committee’s is an important pilar in the EFRJ’s work to enable every person in Europe the right of access to high quality restorative justice. Its purpose is to bring together RJ practitioners (and other experts from related fields) to identify, promote, and support high-quality RJ training practice.  More specifically, the EFRJ Training Committee will:

• Create training offers to further develop professional competences
• Administer a “pool of trainers” (European register of qualified RJ trainers and consultants)
• Support and encourage RJ training initiatives across Europe and beyond
• Promoting good practice standards and ethics
• Encourage exchange between practitioners and trainers
• Assist practitioners and trainers in the field
• Develop strategies to better disseminate values and standards of RJ in practice
• Encourage dissemination and research on training in RJ
• Identify gaps in existing training programs and suggest topics to be explored and developed intro a training program
• Share information on training opportunities for practitioners among EFRJ members and beyond
• Assist the EFRJ Secretariat in organising trainings (or seminars and workshops) in different parts of Europe

 

In practical terms the Committee:

• Comes together to 1 day face-to-face meeting each year (first: 26 November 2019, Leuven)
• Develops materials through collaborative online work and has regular virtual meetings
• Can be consulted on this topic by EFRJ staff and members
• Its members contribute to the work of the EFRJ voluntarily throughout a two year term

Members (2019-2021):

• Daniela Arieti (Italy)
• Marieke Arnou (Belgium)
• Paul Delaney (Ireland)
• Belinda Hopkins (United Kingdom)
• Frauke Petzold (Germany)

• Representative of the Board: Tim Chapman, EFRJ chair.
• Representative of the Secretariat: Bálint Juhász, Training and Communication Officer.

Brief history of this Committee

The Practice & Training Committee has a long history at the EFRJ. Important contributors have been EFRJ members Niall Kearney (UK) and Frauke Petzold (Germany), as they co-organised and delivered the training course in the first six editions of the EFRJ Summer School:

• Pilsen, Czech Republic (2005)
• Riga, Latvia (2007)
• Barcelona, Spain (2009)
• Canterbury, United Kingdom (2011)
• Vienna, Austria (2013)
• Lisbon, Portugal (2015)

In Como, Italy (2017) and Gdansk, Poland (2019), Niall and Frauke contributed to this Committee as external advisers, supporting the EFRJ Secretariat (i.e. Emanuela Biffi) and the invited trainers (i.e. Vince Mercer, Kristel Buntinx, Bie Vanseveren, Belinda Hopkins) in organising the 7th and 8th edition of the EFRJ Summer School.

As the EFRJ is developing its own training offer, in 2019 the EFRJ Board and the Secretariat felt the need to re-launch the EFRJ Training Committee and re-define its tasks & the Training Committee and strengthen its cooperation with the Values & Standards Committee, by applying the manual and practice guidelines on RJ Values and Standards to assure the quality and ethical conduct in the delivery of training.

More information

For more info, to request a course or to propose a topic for a training, please contact the Secretariat, or the Secretariat representative: Balint Juhasz, EFRJ Training & Communication Officer, or the Board representative: Tim Chapman, EFRJ chair.