The PADCO team includes several key technical members who have strong backgrounds in conflict resolution, decentralization, sustainable institutional capacity for conflict prevention, mediation, community security, truth and reconciliation, grant making, and overall project management.

These members and others will work closely together under the guidance of PADCO Senior Conflict Resolution Specialist and Attorney Cynthia Irmer to help USAID Missions develop country- and sector-targeted programs.

Cynthia Irmer, Conflict Resolution Specialist and Attorney, PADCO

Dr. Irmer has extensive expertise in public participation, dispute systems design, mediation and capacity building, and problem-solving methods and trust-building techniques. She is currently working with USAID, the United States-Asia Environmental Partnership (US-AEP), government officials, academics, NGOs, and industry in Thailand to design and implement laws, regulations, and public participation opportunities relating to alternative dispute resolution theory and practice, public participation techniques, and basic environmental mediation. She is also currently collaborating with and supporting the efforts of a Northern Ireland NGO in its efforts to develop and test conflict prevention and resolution theories concerning environmental rejuvenation projects as peace-building mechanisms.

Tracy Vienings: MAC Program Coordinator, CSVR

Ms. Vienings is a CPMR specialist and a multimedia educational specialist who has been with the CSVR since 1992. She has a BA (Hons) from the University of Cape Town (South Africa), a Graduate Diploma in Education from the University of the Western Cape (South Africa), and an Advanced Diploma in Conflict Management from Uppsala University (Sweden). She works mainly in the area of translating CPMR research into meaningful interventions by government and civil society, using video, television, print, audio, and direct interventions through workshops and training programs. Ms. Vienings's extensive international work includes a number of training missions for the United Nations in the field of early warning and conflict prevention. She is an experienced facilitator and an accredited UN trainer, and has conducted training for the UN in the Middle East, Eastern Asia, and South and Central Asia. She also has extensive experience in civil society capacity building in the violence prevention field, and has worked on a range of violence and crime prevention projects and programs dealing with race, identity, and reconciliation. She has extensive experience in the youth sector and in post-conflict heritage and memorialization issues.

Graeme Simpson, Senior CPMR Specialist, CSVR

Mr. Simpson is the Executive Director of CSVR, a position he has held since 1995. Mr. Simpson has an LLB and a master's degree in history from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). He has worked extensively on issues related to transitional justice, including extensive work with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and on the transformation of criminal justice institutions in South Africa. He was one of the drafters of the National Crime Prevention Strategy, adopted by the South African cabinet in May 1996, and a member of the drafting team for the South African White Paper on Safety and Security. Mr. Simpson has worked extensively with both victims and perpetrators of political and criminal violence. He has studied issues of secondary victimization and victim compensation. He has also worked extensively on youth violence and violence against women in South Africa. He has published in all these areas of work and has worked as consultant to both governmental and nongovernmental organizations in various countries, including Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, and Indonesia.

Baffour Agyeman-Duah, CDD

Dr. Agyeman-Duah is the founding Associate Executive Director of CDD-Ghana, a nonprofit, independent, nongovernmental public policy organization based in Accra, Ghana. He has lectured and conducted research on international and economic affairs for 12 years at American and Ghanaian universities, and now serves as Adjunct Faculty of the Washington-based African Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS). He has made presentations at numerous conferences and workshops, including "Electoral Processes and Conflict Management in West Africa," delivered at the Goree Institute, Dakar, Senegal. He directed the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), an EU-sponsored project, which deployed 5,500 observers during Ghana's 2000 elections. Dr. Agyeman-Duah also directed Ghana's Network of Domestic Election Observers (NEDEO) project, which deployed more than 4,500 observers in the 1996 elections. He was the technical consultant and trainer to the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) of Nigeria during the 1998-99 elections.

Bea Abrahams, CSVR

Ms. Abrahams is a Senior Counselor specializing in refugees, exiles, and internally displaced persons. She holds a master's degree in psychology from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria and has completed a 2-year certificate course in Systemic Counseling and Family Therapy at the Zimbabwe Institute for Systemic Therapies in Harare. At the end of 1991, she joined the National Coordinating Committee for the Repatriation of South African Exiles, where, as Senior Counselor, she had overall responsibility for setting up psychosocial services for exiles returning to the Western Cape. Between 1993 and 1996, she worked at the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture in Cape Town, where she coordinated and managed psychosocial services for returned exiles, survivors of political violence, torture survivors, and refugees. In 1994, she was appointed Director of the Trauma Centre. She then joined the National Progressive Primary Health Care Network, where, over a 4-year period, she assumed responsibility for national programs concerned with Legislative Advocacy and Human Rights campaigns connected with health issues. She is co-author of a Mental Health Legislation Manual currently being developed by the World Health Organization, Geneva. At CSVR, Ms. Abrahams is managing a comprehensive reproductive health program for adolescent refugees, carried out in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Papa Mamadou Sene, CLUSA

Mr. Sene, a Senegalese national, has 32 years of experience in the assessment of training needs; design, implementation, and management of training; curriculum development; training of leaders, community groups, and NGOs; and training of trainers, primarily in Francophone Africa. His 16 years of experience on international development projects includes assisting local government/civil society strengthening, community-based natural resources management health management, and rural business development. He is a recognized expert in community mobilization, empowerment of women and youth, participatory training methods, adult education techniques, popular participation, facilitation of conflict management, and advocacy and literacy training. He is a major author of the CLUSA approach to development, which focuses on local level decision making; intensive, experiential training at the village/community level; linkage of training to implementation; and an emphasis on conflict resolution and advocacy. He is experienced in conflict resolution and in performing analyses of constraints to participation and empowerment of women and youth in community-based development organizations and projects.