Reconciliation Leadership™ Certificate Program Curriculum
Higgins Conference Center, Clark University and the United Nations

"The Peoples of this Planet have a Sacred Right to Peace."

—General Assembly Resolution 39/11, November 12, 1984.

Registration information...

The Reconciliation Leadership™ Basic Certificate Program

© The Institute for Global Leadership 2006

Reconciliation Leaders™ are practical idealists who facilitate reconciling environments for any challenge in any setting—family, community, organization, national or global. This leadership arises from the leader’s vocational calling, skill building, a broad world view, a simple and sustainable lifestyle, and a philosophy of life to be at peace in oneself and in service to others for a cooperative and compassionate global society. For more information, click here.

The Basic Program in Reconciliation Leadership™ introduces personal and interpersonal skill building as well as vocational leadership.

The Advanced Program in Reconciliation Leadership™ introduces group, systemic and global skillbuilding as well as vocational leadership.

Patron and Key Instructor: Mr. Anwarul K. Chowdhury, High Representative and Under-Secretary-General, Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States.

Director and Instructor: Virginia Swain, Institute for Global Leadership

Participants may take individual courses, upon request.

Groups I and II Basic Program in Reconciliation Leadership™

Group I: October 2006-June 2007

Group II: February-June 2007

The Basic Program combines individualized vocational training with courses that introduce personal and interpersonal skills. The skills and vocational training are integrated in the individualized Mission Statement and Mentoring courses. The skills introduced are at the end of each course description.

Vocational Training, Personal and Interpersonal Skillbuilding

All of us have the capacity to be and do more that we ever could imagine, but we need support and experienced mentoring to cultivate core talents. We recognize all human beings in their uniqueness, need and capacity for transformation by helping participant leaders clarify vocational calling and its application to daily life and work. By training and experience, we affirm the uniqueness, capacity and achievability of life for the better. We provides counseling, mentoring, and training services so that clients may use their strengths, core gifts and calling as a foundation upon which to reconcile life’s challenges.

When new challenges stand in the way of such development, we provide resources for personal and professional renewal to help achieve balance, fulfillment, integrity and a sense of meaning and purpose. Leaders then have the confidence to withstand the stress and resistance of living in a culture that disavows these values.

We mentor clients to draw on and integrate their gifts, skills, practical experience and intuitive knowing to express themselves and act with confidence, integrity and authority. The traditional view of power in the working world is that it comes from external sources, from one's position in an organization, for example. Consequently we're apt to believe that the reason for our lack of power is outside our control. We explore ways to experience the power of living one’s values in the workplace. First we clarify values, identify skills, abilities and interests, then assess career options where values, skill, abilities and interests intersect for a renewed vocational life.

Integrating Vocational Training with Skillbuilding

The Practice of Reconciliation Leadership™: Highlighting and Appropriating Your Uniqueness. A framework for emerging and seasoned leaders is provided to become aware of core gifts and talents, begin to confirm vocational calling, learn to access one's deepest hopes and visions, and write a personal paragraph to begin a mission statement process. The course is designed to discover, reclaim and experience your true self. This course also offers participants an opportunity to establish a relationship with the earth as a beginning of a new depth of connection to one another.

Weekend: October 13-15 (Group I) or February 2-4 2007 (Group II)

Skills that are introduced:

• self-awareness of one's gifts and strengths and a healthy self esteem
• clarity of one's own needs and agenda as well as understanding the role and untapped potential of the unconscious
• balance and wellness in one's daily life
• compassionate listening
• ability to give and receive
• creating a support system for high personal and job satisfaction
• integrating one's spirituality in work and relationships
• ability to give and receive
• rediscovery of awe and wonder in daily life
• a personal relationship to the earth and its resources
• sharing resources

Writing a personal mission statement for the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World (2001-2010) and the Millennium Development Goals: This experiential course offers a 10-hour individualized process and framework for emerging and seasoned leaders to become aware of core gifts and talents, begin to trust one’s inner voice, confirm vocational calling, learn to access one’s deepest hopes and visions and form a one-sentence mission statement.

Scheduled at the convenience of the participants.

Skills that are introduced and then applied in the Mission Statement:

• clarifying, assessing and communicating values, ethics and goals
• clarifying personal mission
• writing a mission statement

New Perspectives on Anger, Conflict, Cross Cultural and Multiethnic Aspects of Reconciliation Leadership™: New perspectives on age-old challenges reveal new ways to address one's own and another's anger, conflict and differences. This course includes gender, race, and ethnicity to include our common humanity and a new level of consciousness, global citizenship, in Reconciliation Leadership™.

Worcester; Long Weekend Course Friday-Monday, November 3-6 2006 (Group I) and March 2-4(Group II)

Skills that are introduced that are then practiced in the practicum at the end of the program:

• resolving inner conflicts, anger, stress, and self-defeating behavior
• addressing fears: both of failure and success
• ability to reflect feelings and emotions in a way that is not alienating to others
• understanding the role of untapped potential of the unconscious in relationships
• developing tools for resolving gender and relationship issues
• cultural sensitivity: awareness of brotherhood and sisterhood beyond perceived differences

Reconciliation Leadership™ and Global Frameworks Wednesday-Friday, December 6-8 (Group I) April 4-6 (Group II). Daily Reflection Time in the Dag Hammarskjold Meditation Room

Practicum: All the learning thus far is applied to a personal or interpersonal challenge. Participant leaders will receive individual mentoring to integrate the teachings, skills, and the leader's mission statement and vocational calling into one's life, work, and relationships. Scheduled at convenience of participant leader. 20 hours January-May 2007

Skills that are introduced:

• eliminating the dichotomy of a work self versus a true self
• compassionate listening
• ability to reflect feelings and emotions in a way that is not alienating to others
• Developing tools for reconciling gender and relationship issues

2007 Advanced Certificate in Reconciliation Leadership Tuition Groups I and II June-December 2007

The Advanced Program offers continued vocational training, the introduction of systemic and global skills while integrating the personal and interpersonal skills learned thus far and applying all the learning in another Practicum.

Vocational Training and Systemic/Group Skillbuilding.

Building on fifteen years of practice in consultation, mediation, reconciliation and training in local and international institutions, we mentor seasoned and emerging leaders to introduce change and reconciling environments in institutions. The institution thus serves as a learning laboratory, a nexus, between people of diverse backgrounds, with unique and special opportunities to respect differences among people who would not ordinarily meet one another. We help those interested in dialogue that moves beyond current societal understanding and practice.

We offer resources to transform highly stressful situations. We provide consultation, mentoring and education for leaders who wish to serve in business and non-profits as well as leaders who engage in pacific settlement of disputes, prevention and post-conflict peacebuilding.

Skills that are introduced are listed at the end of each course are applied to the practicum experience for personal learning.

Mentoring Course: Participant leaders will receive 10 hours of mentoring with Virginia Swain, MA, CPHC, Director, throughout the courses to integrate the teachings, skills, and the leader's vocational calling into one's life, work, and relationships. Scheduled at the convenience of the participant leader.

Designing and Implementing Interventions for Community, Institutional, Systemic, National and Global Change: In this course, the participant leader learns how to introduce and sustain change in a resistant system using theoretical and practical skills to create peaceful, ethical, just, humane, culturally sensitive, and sustainable structures and frameworks. The course offers experiential learning as a way to integrate conceptual learning, engenders a cross-sectoral approach to intervening in crises, and elicits participants' knowledge and wisdom in a course project.

Course June 4-8, 2007

Skills that are introduced that are later practiced in the practicum:

• understanding how to introduce change in a small or large system
• changing with parallel development and the life cycle model
• having courage and discipline to refrain from individual action-taking
• understanding the role of untapped potential of collective unconscious in groups
• believing that collective problem-solving and learning provide better answers
• building community from intention and collective action beyond team building
• aligning people's and organizational vision, mission and goals
• learning the role of an individual in transformation in organizational life
• implementing change while keeping trust
• consulting skills: entry, assessment, planning, implementing, follow up, evaluation

Global Skill Building

The United Nations and the Harmonization of Nations: An Evolving Process (Virginia Swain, Under Secretary-General Chowdhury and guest speakers). The United Nations was formed to abolish war by the victors of World War II. A history of the formation of the United Nations will be given as well as how its strengths and limitations contribute and deter this body from its goal. Among the reflection topics during the five days: Article 1.4 of the United Nations Charter: “to be a Centre for harmonizing the ac

Course July 2-6, 2007

Skills that are introduced that are later practiced by the participant leader in the Practicum:

• networking and working collaboratively with those who have a similar goal to build coalitions
• using envisioning and implementing vision as a way to resolve historic conflict and open the way to the new
• envisioning and living a global ethic based on compassion
• imaging and implementing new forms of cooperation for a post-competitive age
• participative decision making
• social consciousness in caring for the other
• linking individual renewal and responsibility to institutional, community, cultural, religious and global systems
• combination of an historic, restorative and visionary perspective
• experiencing intercultural sister and brotherhood
• interdependent thinking and acting from experience of oneness
• intimate communion with the earth and its resources
• conscience and accountability
• transparency
• global citizenship
• reconciliation across all divisions: gender, religion, culture, race, age, culture, ethnicity

The Practice of Reconciliation Leadership™ II Advanced course with case studies. Worcester July 31-August 4, 2007

Practicum: The leader will apply their mission statement and all the learning thus far to a reconciliation intervention for a harmonious, multiethnic community, institution, national or global challenge.

20 hours of mentoring. August-October, 2007.

Skill that are practiced in this course:

• Facilitating ethical, just, humane, economic and environmentally sustainable structures while appreciating diversity and intercultural sensitivity to ecological, peaceful, economic and social systems in the global marketplace

Certificate Ceremony: Dedication in the Dag Hammarskjold Meditation Room, United Nations, New York. December 2007.

Faculty Members

Mr. Anwarul K. Chowdhury, High Representative and Under-Secretary-General, Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States.

Virginia Swain, Director, Institute for Global Leadership; President, Center for Global Community and World Law.

For more information, contact Virginia Swain, Director, Institute for Global Leadership at 508-245-6843 or email.

Work, Purpose Place and Peace: This workshop presents opportunities to understand your gifts, talents and abilities, and expand your perceptions about the importance of your own humanity to the world. September 15-17 in Tiverton, RI. Call Barbara Wheeler at 401-624-6224 if interested. This course is offered for enrichment and is not included in the tuition of the certificate program.