Site: | OpenLearn Create |
Course: | 1 Core Concepts |
Book: | Community Engagement |
Printed by: | Guest user |
Date: | Saturday, 4 May 2024, 2:58 AM |
The list below shows some of the key characteristics of a good facilitator:
1. Selecting and getting to know the community members
The exact type of engagement is discussed in more detail in later units but most engagement starts with a community meeting or engagement where you set out what type of engagement is planned. It is therefore important to state what is required for participation prior to community engagement.
You can use criteria to select the most appropriate people to be involved, such as prior experience of community engagement, particular language skills, IT skills, gender or age. Language is particularly important, so you need to have a good translator if you do not speak all the local languages or dialects. Seek as wide a representation of the community as possible. It is a good idea to explicitly identify and distinguish specific groups in terms of age (elderly, youth), gender, origin (ethnic, location), social status, religion, employment, and community involvement.
Once participants have come forward, you will need to get to know them. Use the questions below to facilitate this:
Questions to ask community members before getting started:
3. Making it fun and engaging!
One of the most important aspects of community engagement is that it should be fun and engaging rather than boring and formal. Based on experience, we know that numerous approaches and techniques used in this course not only stimulate thinking, creativity and discussion, they are also fun to do and can generate a lot of laughter and a ‘feel good’ atmosphere in the participants. To achieve this, many games can be sprinkled throughout the engagement - these are called icebreakers and energisers. Icebreakers can help people to get to know each other at the start of a session, feel at ease and can be used to introduce the theme of the activity. Energisers are games that are meant to wake up community members, particularly at the start of sessions after lunch or after long periods of sitting and listening.
4. Feedback and evaluation
It is important to have regular feedback and evaluation during the engagement to make sure participants really understood what was carried out. It also offers a summary of what has been learnt on both sides. Lastly don’t forget to reflect on your own facilitation, on how you thought the activities went, identifying how and where things might need to be changed. It is also important that monitoring and evaluation continues throughout the whole community engagement to monitor progress and assess impact.
Now, after having finished this book, make sure to go back to the main page and complete activity 2.