AMBASSADOR MULAMULA SHARES HER EXPERIENCE AT THE GREATLAKES WITH SULISBURY UNIVESITY STUDENTS AND FACULTY

 “If there is anything wrong with conflict, it is how we respond to them” remarked Ambassador Mulamula in her keynote address at the University of Salisbury in Northern Maryland at a panel discussion on Conflict Resolution and Organizational management on Friday October 25, 2013. 

Addressing students and faculty, Ambassador Mulamula shared her experience as the first Executive Secretary of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) from 2006 to 2011, stating that unlike the learned Salisbury community, she doesn’t study conflicts, she “live them”

She explained the meaning of her name “Mulamula” an arbitrator, a plant that is planted on the ground after mediation of  land dispute is concluded. She added even with such a name, she still faces, like many others, challenges that exist in managing the humanistic instinctively reaction to conflicts.

“We often respond to conflicts instinctively, therefore we miss the opportunity to harness the goods that may come out of a conflict” she said.

Linking her message with recent global changes which she explains make it more difficult for organization Executives to manage conflicts in their institutions and work places. She summed her speech outlining success in mediation and facilitation as well as challenges, in a ten action points that she believes to be helpful in managing conflicts.

Ambassador Mulamula was invited to give a keynote speech at the Salisbury University by Jacques Koko, Assistant Professor and Director of the Graduate Program of Conflict Analysis and Dispute Resolution at the Fulton School of Liberal Arts at Salisbury.

After her speech, a group of panelists from the University and the community provided some light on causes and implications of organizational conflict, and how such conflicts can be addressed constructively.