For communities & groups
Work that starts where people live
Mediation, restorative practice, dialogue and accredited training — with residents groups, youth projects, schools, churches and community organisations across Northern Ireland.
Cost
Quoted per piece of work
Where
Across Northern Ireland
Referrals
From anyone, including yourself
Accredited by
OCN Northern Ireland
If something has gone wrong between people
It might be neighbours who have stopped speaking. A group that has split into two camps. A dispute between organisations that both serve the same street. Or tension at an interface that comes back every summer.
We work with the people involved, at their pace, without taking sides and without deciding anything for them. Our commercial work subsidises this, and community organisations pay a reduced rate, but the work is still paid for — by the group, by a funder, or through a programme.
Between us we have reached more than 3,900 people across the UK, Ireland and beyond — through mediation, accredited training and community programmes. What that work is worth, and how the value of it was measured, is set out on our social value page.
How we help
Community mediation
Neighbour disputes, community tension, anti-social behaviour, and disputes between groups.
Restorative practice
Building relationships, resolving difficulty and repairing harm — in schools, youth settings and neighbourhoods.
Dialogue for Peaceful Change
Our own methodology for managing conflict in communities, delivered across six countries from 2006. No longer running.
Accredited community training
OCN accredited qualifications in good relations, identity, restorative practice and mediation.
Thirty years on the ground
In partnership with Mediation Northern Ireland we provide the mediation service for the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, covering approximately 89,000 tenants — neighbour and community disputes, anti-social behaviour, and racist and sectarian attacks.
Alongside that we have run Building Relationships in Communities across more than 80 locations with the Rural Development Council and the Housing Executive, DARE with Bryson Intercultural on race and ethnicity, and successive programmes funded through PEACE I, II and III.
It is first-hand experience on contentious interfaces that we bring back into the training room.
The people closest to a conflict are usually the people best placed to resolve it — if someone gives them a process and holds the room.
How we work
We do not arrive with a solution. We assess, we design something that fits the situation, and we work at the pace of the people involved. Sometimes that produces a written agreement. Sometimes it just means two people can use the same shop again.
Next step
Talk to someone
You do not need a referral form or a formal complaint to start. A phone call is enough, and there is no charge for the conversation.