History

The project appoints Hilary Stacey as co-ordinator. During the next three years considerable growth takes place. The project worked in a number of schools in the area and the region. Hilary visited Dresden to explore links with Coventry on the development of an A level German pack.

The peer mediation work now so central to the Project began at this time. In 1990 only Kingston Friends Workshop Group (KFWG) was doing this type of work in the UK, based on ideas brought back from Quaker projects in the USA. Hilary visited KFWG, was fired up by what she saw, and brought it back to Dudley. By January – March 1994 work at Jessons Primary School had developed into a peer mediation scheme involving the training of children in three classes of 8-9 year olds in peace-making and mediation.

The funding provided by Friends and Trusts only covered the core costs of providing an office base and administering the project. Schools therefore needed to be charged for the courses provided in order to pay the workers. It was felt that, in any case, this was right in principle; the project needed to position itself as a high quality and fully professional provider, rather than a charity willing to do something for nothing in order to get a foot in the door. The trouble was that schools had heavily competing demands on their budgets as well as their time, and the system was developed, and remains, whereby the project developed its own bursary fund, in effect charging schools for the work but also helping them find these costs.

Work continued to concentrate on 10 week courses in a variety of schools – some with a long standing relationship to the project, some new – together with some one-off events. In 2004, for example, the Project worked in nine schools where it had worked previously and four new; in 2005 work was done in 16 school.

Alice Meager, Project Director from 2001 – 2009 comments: “QPEP has enormous potential which it has been slow to realise, but if one child in one classroom is able to use his skills in a difficult conflict situation with success, at any time in his life, the Project will be a huge success. Those of us who have been involved, in whatever capacity, do not need to know about individual successes of this kind. We already know the skills are there in the experience of the large numbers of young people and professionals with whom we have worked.”

A strategic plan for 2011 – 2014 with the following aims:

• More primary schools in the West Midlands implement peaceful, inclusive and restorative approaches to conflict resolution at different levels throughout their schools
• More children will be equipped with the skills to manage conflict at different levels
• More adults in schools know about and use inclusive and restorative approaches to conflict resolution and have peacemaker skills
• There is increased awareness of the benefits of restorative approaches to conflict resolution in schools in the West Midlands (within schools themselves, local authorities and other relevant organisations.

Ellis Brooks was appointed in April 2010 as the project’s first permanently employed Peace Education Trainer. Part-time freelance trainers continued to work for the project, and the total number of schools in which the project worked continued to grow. A second permanent worker, Anna Gregory, was appointed in 2011.

The resource ‘Learning for Peace’ was developed which saw core activities and pedagogy combined in to a book and an online resource. This resources allows the work to be shared outside of the West Midlands.