Lead Trainer and researcher Olav Ofstad
Kidnapping Survival provides highly specialized training in travel security, kidnapping/hijacking survival and conflict management. We offer real-world training, based on powerful and highly effective applications of hands-on social psychology, research and experience.
Our Training differs from other methods (generally offered by security agencies and conflict management trainers) as social psychology is vastly under-utilized in kidnapping survival and conflict management training.
Our Training includes:
- Security on travel: General precautions and specific ones, subject to where you are
going
- Assaults: How to handle attacks under different circumstances
- Kidnapping survival: How to survive kidnapping/hostage situations.
- Hijacking survival, including specialized training on hijacking at sea.
- Conflict resolution and reconciliation, which prepares you to handle every kind of
conflict.
Workshops, lectures and presentations are tailored to your unique needs.Our training on kidnapping and hijacking survival are offered in different formats:
1-2 day workshops
Intensive 'crash courses'
Individually adapted training on selected subjects
Refresher training, both ad hoc and long term programmes
Our Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation Training spans from lectures to One Week Workshops
Our training is relevant for:
- Marine officers and crew
- Flight personnel
- Diplomats
- Business executives
- Journalists
- Soldiers
- Humanitarian workers
- Tourists and others exposed to the risk of kidnapping/hijacking
- Anyone who wishes to develop skills in conflict management
Books of interest
Surviving Kidnappers, Precautions, influence, Strategic tools by Olav Ofstad (Troubador, 2017)
is the first 'truly authoritative insider's guide' on kidnapping survival: Tim Curtis, Managing Partner of the Security Cooperative. The book is a survival manual but may also serve as a textbook for trainers. For further information and reviews see The Survival Guide
A taste of the book is found in a recent podcast talk between Olav Ofstad and famous traveller/explorer Francis Tapon.
See https://francistapon.com/Work/WanderLearn-Podcast/How-to-Avoid-or-Survive-a-Kidnapping
Surviving Kidnappers, Precautions, influence, Strategic tools by Olav Ofstad (Troubador, 2017)
is the first 'truly authoritative insider's guide' on kidnapping survival: Tim Curtis, Managing Partner of the Security Cooperative. The book is a survival manual but may also serve as a textbook for trainers. For further information and reviews see The Survival Guide
A taste of the book is found in a recent podcast talk between Olav Ofstad and famous traveller/explorer Francis Tapon.
See https://francistapon.com/Work/WanderLearn-Podcast/How-to-Avoid-or-Survive-a-Kidnapping
Conflict Management in International Missions: A field guide by Olav Ofstad (Routledge 2015) addresses typical real time challenges that international staff face in the field, offering academically solid but at the same time understandable hands on practical advice.
Ofstad has drawn extensively on existing literature as well as his own experiences and observations from conflict scenes in different parts of the world. It offers a step by step guide and discusses a variety of challenges, including personal conflicts/security issues as well as third party conflicts. It presents a practical model of mediation and shows how we may draw on social psychology in third party interventions where we have no means of power. The peacebuilding chapter aims at offering a broad introduction but also practical advice on all the most typical challenges we face in the Field.
For further details and reviews see A Book for International Personnel.
