Training course on techniques to help resource users become active decision makers

As communities and local people gain more responsibility and authority for sustaining the resources around them, they need to build their own skills in assessment, negotiation, formulation of management agreements, and planning and implementing projects. In community-based management, conventional instructive approaches have proven less effective in building skills than more participatory facilitation approaches.

Facilitation processes require strong skills in fostering communication, sharing, problem solving, and other techniques that allow resource users to be active decision makers. Facilitators must understand group dynamics and identify and introduce appropriate interventions based on users' needs, all while building upon the knowledge and experience of the users themselves.

Aims and Objectives

The course will enable you to:

• Practice a wide range of facilitation skills including probing, paraphrasing, reframing, and tracking
• Improve skills in facilitating communication between and within diverse interest groups in the context of community-based natural resource management
• Identify suitable strategies for facilitating different stages of natural resource management and responding to challenges such as resistance and difficult group dynamics
• Develop a personal action plan for applying your enhanced skills and new insights in your own work environment
   

Who Should Attend?

Organizations, trainers, facilitators, teachers, practitioners, and fieldworkers who have an interest in, or want to enhance their skills in, facilitation of community-based natural resource management
 

Course Contents

This course is built on participatory learning techniques and adult learning principles and builds on the prior experiences of participants. Carefully designed and tested simulations will allow participants to practice facilitation techniques. Any of the following sections of the training program can be combined and varied to fully customize the training for specified needs:

• Preparing for the job
• Participatory decision making
• Facilitation fundamentals
• Core role of a facilitator
• Practicing facilitation skills
• Integrating skills

Optional sessions can include: monitoring meetings, selecting facilitation methods, facilitating change in participants' work environments, and evaluating learning.

Course Length

This course can range from five days upward, including a training needs assessment conducted by participants during the course.