Sharing tools and knowledge on how to build peace and minimise conflict dynamics enables those directly affected by violent conflict, and those whose policies and practices impact on prospects for peace, to work towards sustained peace.

Alert uses training and learning methodologies grounded in an understanding of causes and drivers of conflict to:

1. Support and inform the peacebuilding approaches used by those affected by violent conflict;
2. Improve the policy and practice of governments, donors and intergovernmental organisations in building sustainable peace;
3. Strengthen the expertise, impact and public profile of the peacebuilding sector.

Alert offers bespoke training at entry-level, field practitioner and strategic levels, as well as supporting Alert’s regional and thematic work on conflict and peacebuilding.

Conflict and peace-related training topics include:

• Skills for working on conflict
• Introduction to working in conflict
• Conflict sensitivity and development programming
• Conflict sensitivity in business practices
• Reintegration of ex-combatants
• Gender, security and peace
• Gender and peacebuilding

For a full list of bespoke training topics, please visit the bespoke training page.

Alert’s dedicated Training and Learning Team is comprised of experienced training and learning professionals drawn from a wide range of backgrounds, including peacebuilding, mediation, development, humanitarian response and election observation. For trainer biographies, please visit trainers page.

Drawing on experiences from Alert’s field programmes, the Training and Learning Team also works with key policy makers and practitioners in government, UN missions and agencies, donor organisations and development and humanitarian agencies to support them in conflict sensitising their policies and interventions. For further information on bespoke training, visit the bespoke training page.

Alert uses training and learning to address global peacebuilding issues, such as the strengthening of international peacebuilding institutions to understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities to work effectively in conflict-affected countries. We also support regional programmes in their training and learning activities.

In addition, the Training and Learning Team works to support learning within Alert and to ensure that the evolution of Alert’s own peacebuilding practice is rooted in country, regional, programmatic and organisational learning.

Partnerships

In order to maintain the continued high impact of our training, Alert is actively engaged in training and learning networks, including the European Group on Training (EGT). For the past nine years the EGT has been providing training for civilians deployed on EU crisis management missions. The EGT provides a forum for sharing expertise and best practices between training institutions in 22 EU member states. As part of our engagement in the EGT, Alert has conducted research on European Vocational Education and Training standards with regards to training accreditation and implementation standards. For more information, please visit the EGT webpage.

Alert is also an active member of the Conflict Sensitivity Consortium (CSC), which comprises peacebuilding, humanitarian and development organisations in the UK, Sierra Leone, Kenya and Sri Lanka. For three years, the CSC has been implementing a learning project to improve the effectiveness and impact of development and humanitarian assistance programmes through the mainstreaming and consistent application of conflict-sensitive approaches and principles. As part of our engagement, Alert has undertaken a self assessment on conflict-sensitive approaches and is using the outcome to continue internal dialogue on how to fully integrate conflict sensitivity into all aspects of our work. For more information on the work of the consortium, please visit the Conflict Sensitivity Consortium webpage.