Mediation Training in
Ghana
The Carey Center is partnering with Fordham Law School’s Feerick
Center for Social Justice to offer mediation training in
Ghana. Sponsored by the Giving to Ghana Foundation, St.
John's and Fordham are working with the Catholic University in
Sunyani, Ghana to offer training at the new Marian Conflict
Resolution Center there.
The first training, conducted in August 2011, provided intensive
instruction in mediation to a diverse group of professionals,
clergy, chiefs, and academics from around Ghana, and featured
appearances by the Chief Justice of the Ghana Supreme Court and
other high-ranking officials. Working with several prominent
Ghanaian law professors and former Fordham Dean John Feerick, Carey
Center Director Elayne Greenberg and Fordham’s Professor Jacqueline
Nolan-Haley designed the program and led the training effort. St.
John’s students Samantha Horn ’11 and Nk Udogwu ’12 led breakout
sessions in which the trainees practiced mediating realistic
simulated disputes
The training builds on a training St. John’s School of Law
hosted in the summer of 2008 in which a group of Ghanaian students
came to New York to study American alternative dispute resolution
systems.
Bankruptcy Mediation
Project
The Carey Center is partnering with the American Bankruptcy
Institute (ABI) and the Center for Bankruptcy Studies at St. John’s
to promote best practices for the conduct of ADR mechanisms within
the bankruptcy system. ABI is the nation’s
leading provider of quality bankruptcy educational programs, and
St. John’s Center for Bankruptcy Studies offers the nation's
premier bankruptcy program, featuring the only LL.M. in Bankruptcy.
Together, ABI and St. John’s publish the ABI Law Review, the
nation’s premier bankruptcy journal, with a circulation of
approximately 11,000. Having partnered in 2009 with the ABI Law
Review to host a conference on ADR in bankruptcy, the Carey Center
now extends this successful collaboration to develop this
groundbreaking bankruptcy mediation training program.
In December 2011, the Carey Center, in conjunction with the ABI,
offered a comprehensive 40-hour training in bankruptcy mediation at
St. John’s University’s campus in Manhattan. Carey Center
Director
Elayne E. Greenberg developed and led the training.
Prominent bankruptcy judges from around the nation served as an
advisory board, including:
- Hon. Cecelia B. Morris (S.D.N.Y.)
- Hon. Joan Freeney (D. Mass.)
- Hon. Jeffrey Hopkins (S.D. Ohio)
- Hon. David Houston (N.D. Miss.)
- Hon. John Olson (S.D. Fla.)
- Hon. Elizabeth Perris (D. Or.)
- Hon. Barry Russell (C.D. Cal.)
- Hon. Elizabeth Stong (E.D.N.Y.).
The program covered the theory, skills and specific practice
challenges of bankruptcy mediation. Through lectures, exercises and
simulations focusing solely on bankruptcy conflicts, the training
covered both the core skills essential for all good mediators and
the specialized bankruptcy issues inherent in Chapter 7, 11 and 13
mediations.