Last week at the IFC-Asia, I co-designed and facilitated a 90 minute workshop with Marco Kuntze titled "The Digital NGO: The Journey from Paper to Screen." Jo Wolfe, Aseem Thakur, Gillian Tan, Cherisse Beh, Katie Bengaard, and Toral Cowieson joined our session as small group facilitators. Just A Little Content To Get Started There are different ways to design a participatory workshop. It could be 100% in that participants provide the content by connecting with others and sharing experience and … [Read more...]
Trainer's Notebook: Facilitating Brainstorming Sessions for Nonprofit Work
Does your work at a nonprofit include facilitating meetings or trainings? Looking for new techniques to add to your facilitator's toolbox? This is the focus of a session called "The Big Bang Theory: Creative Facilitation and Training Techniques," that I'm co-facilitating at the Nonprofit Technology Conference with Cindy Leonard and Jeanne Allen. I'll be sharing tips and techniques on how to generate ideas or "brainstorming" techniques. What is Brainstorming? Brainstorming can be done as a … [Read more...]
Trainer's Notebook: The Importance of Hands-On Learning
For the past five years, I've been an adjunct professor at Middlebury College in Monterey teaching a graduate course called "Networked International Organizations" for students pursuing an advanced degree in International Development. As part of the class, we look at different examples of networked strategies and digital platforms and tools and how they can be used to advance civil society goals. Going beyond content delivery, I also use a lot of participatory and hands-on learning techniques … [Read more...]
Trainer's Notebook: A Great Training Starts with A Great Icebreaker
During the summer, I've been designing workshops based on The Happy Healthy Nonprofit and Emerging Leaders Playbook. A great training always start with a great opening or icebreaker. Icebreakers are discussion questions or activities used to help participants relax and ease people into a group meeting or learning situation. It is important to build in time for an icebreaker whether it is a staff training, board retreat, or a workshop with people coming together for the first … [Read more...]
Trainer's Notebook: Tips for Good Openings
I've just returned from a two-week trip to Guatemala hosted by Wake. Wake's Tech2Empower program organizes delegations of volunteer Technology Advisors, women who work for Silicon Valley companies like Google, Salesforce, Mozilla, YouTube, GE Digital and IRC, to provide training for women's rights and girls empowerment NGOs in developing countries and here in the United States. We worked with a network of women's rights NGOs located throughout Latin America and Guatemala who traveled to Antigua … [Read more...]
