Process Design & Facilitation
Community development is a beautiful thing with many tools. Often when we are working for social change we host events that neither engage people nor lead to collective action. Here are some things I can help with:
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Workshops and training
Meaningful engagement of staff, volunteers, advocates or activists, and your purpose to empower learning for action. -
Mentoring new staff in community development
Skill, knowledge and confidence building -
Designing more engaging events and actions
I recommend we ban the panel and instead create events that empower action and progress on your cause. -
Knowledge translation, knowledge transfer and knowledge mobilization
Turning research evidence into effective policy, programs for change and community building. -
Coalition building & sector collaboration
Helping people work in common cause by building capacity for cooperation. -
Participatory visioning & strategic planning
Large group planning using everyone’s gifts and experience. -
Winning campaigns for social change
Strategic campaign design, delivery and assessment.
Why Process Design & Facilitation?
Process design is about linking the what and the how, and it is about incorporating system and design thinking into our community work. We often focus on what we want to do and where we want to go with policy change and miss the other half of the equation; the steps and the methods of working together to get there. Also layering and linking the what and the how is part of making magic when working in groups and encouraging learning.
Process design can also unleash the creativity and the power of possibility in our community work if it ensures we focus on engaging all the brains and experience in our group. The beauty of inclusion and diversity in our community work is other people working with us can help us see and challenge our assumptions and unconscious biases about what is right and true. While this can be uncomfortable, it can also be what saves us, what leads to positive ideas, plans and the social change we need. We are encouraged to move between the individual, community and systemic, the internal and external, the forest and the trees.
Adult education is about learning from our experience. We learn from our lived experience by reflecting on it, from trial and error, from falling down and getting up again. We can also learn from group simulations, learning activities accompanied by reflection and debriefing. Designing these simulations and learning activities that help us learn from our experience is one of my favourite things to do.