Educator helped advance peace
Ann Edge: b Dunedin, November 23, 1950; m Mark Edge 2d; d Wellington, June 21, 2012, aged 61.
ANN EDGE was a pre-eminent peacemaker and pioneering educator. She was a pivotal New Zealand figure whose influential work has left a lasting legacy in the sectors she devoted her life to improving.
In the area of professional dispute resolution, her contributions were singular and momentous.
She taught mediation, advocated for mediation and was herself a highly skilled mediator.
Her notable assignments included being asked to provide conflict resolution training in the Solomon Islands in the aftermath of that country’s civil war. Her work involved teaching peaceful ways to negotiate to people who had until recently been shooting at each other, and was an important part of the reconciliation process.
In the education world, she lectured, managed and advised, and worked at various times as an investigator, project leader and innovator. Her empathy for the needs of children inspired her to help establish a programme to meet the needs of children during out-of-school hours in a safe and fun way, which is now run throughout New Zealand.
Throughout her life she pushed for the highest standards in dispute resolution, qualities she exemplified in her personal and professional style: sweet and intuitive, collegial and innovative, always modest.
At the Arbitrators and Mediators’ Institute of New Zealand , she was a member of the investigations committee, a membership assessor, and served on the education and qualifications committee. She was also the institute’s first female vice-president and president, and the first specialist mediator to be elected to those positions, continuing in the latter role long after she was diagnosed with cancer. She died while holding office.
Ann had a vision. This was not only the case for the institute, but for dispute resolution generally in New Zealand. The evidence for this shows, for instance, in a nationwide quality mediation scheme she advocated for families looking to sort out their differences without the often emotionally grinding intercession of the courts.
Away from the boardroom, she lectured in dispute resolution at Massey and Victoria universities. She privately taught dispute resolution. She believed, rightly, it ought to be the entitlement of anyone involved in navigating his or her way through life’s tough situations, whether at home, at work or indeed in geopolitical conflict.
Those skills were recognised when she was asked by the Pacific Islands Forum to go to the Solomon Islands as it emerged from the civil war in the early 2000s.
Ann and fellow specialist Roger Pitchforth were asked to help build the capacity to negotiate among those who had been on opposing sides in the conflict. The seminar was attended by Cabinet ministers, heads of the civil ser- vice and political leaders. People, who only a few months earlier had been fighting each other, were now in the same room, learning the practical skills to peacefully settle their differences.
The teaching was very well received, but the country was still on edge and the need for great caution meant Ann would not go out at night.
Her own upbringing occurred in a different world. She was born Ann Gillies, in Dunedin, the eldest of five children, and the only girl in the household. The family home resounded with music. Her father, Duncan, played violin in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and her mother, Barbara, had studied music at Canterbury University College, and also sang.
All this inspired an early love of folk music. But Ann’s creative passion extended to the visual arts, as well, taking in sculpture, fibre art and design, which she continued to pursue while studying toward her qualifications, diplomas in dispute resolution from
Talking the talk is one thing, but Ann Edge was somebody who knew that listening to the talk is what counts for more.
Massey University, a master’s degree in conflict resolution from La Trobe University in Melbourne and fellowship of the institute.
Ann pursued a teaching career when she first left school. With that background she became a member of the Wellington College of Education professional advisory committee for early childhood education.
Her empathy for the needs of children inspired her to help establish Out of School Care and Recreation, a programme to meet the needs of children during outof-school hours in a safe and fun way.
The scheme has 80,000 children throughout New Zealand. Ann was the founding president of the national organisation and served on its board for 11 years.
In 1976, in Basel, Switzerland, she married Mark Edge, with whom she had two daughters, Sylvia and Kendra. They survive her, as does the work she did and the style she brought to it over the past 20 years.
Talking the talk is one thing, but Ann was somebody who knew that listening to the talk is what counts for more. She had an exceptionally well-trained ear for what others were saying, individually, professionally and nationally, and because she knew how to listen, others listened to her.
She had a wide circle of friends to whom she was devoted, and who, in turn, were devoted to her. A Life Story tells about a New Zealander who helped to shape their community. If you know someone whose story should be told, please email Obituaries@dompost.co.nz.