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Excellence in facilitation

W&W April 2016 cover image 900x600Welcome to this April 2016 issue of Winds & Waves, the online magazine of ICA International, on the theme “Excellence in Facilitation”.

The Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) has for decades employed facilitation as a core strategy in our mission of ‘advancing human development worldwide’. When I myself first trained with ICA in the UK, as an international volunteer to a Human Development Project of ICA in India in 1986, a core element of that training was in what was then referred to as ‘ICA methods’ – what is now known worldwide as ICA’s ‘Technology of Participation’ (ToP) facilitation methodology. Facilitation remains central to our approach to doing human development, and to being ICA.

This facilitative approach is more critical today than ever in enabling the human family to address the great challenges and opportunities that are now facing us and our planet. We argue, in an ICAI statement submitted this month to the UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA), that facilitation has a key role to play in moving from commitments to results, transforming public institutions and leadership for the implementation and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals.

In this issue you will find a diverse collection of stories illustrating how ICAs and colleagues of our global network are applying such a facilitative approach in a variety of settings, from local to global, often in peer-to-peer collaboration with each each other.

A rehabilitation project of ICA Nepal brings hope to those affected by that country’s earthquake, supported by ICA Australia. ICA Taiwan builds a learning community through ‘Truth About Life’ dialogues. ICA Chile partners with the Ministry of Social development and with Global Facilitators Serving Communities (GFSC) in leadership development work with disabled people.  ICA Peru supports comprehensive community development programmes in high altitude mountain communities affected by climate change. Emerging Ecology USA and ICA India develop a capacity building curriculum, building on ICA’s original Human Development Training Institutes of the 1970s.

Ann Epps of LENS International Malaysia reflects on the Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF) programme of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF), founded in 1994 by 70 ICA ToP facilitators including Ann herself. Winds & Waves editor Rosemary Cairns reflects on the role played by facilitation in turning volunteers into a social movement, through a Community Revitalization through Democratic Action programme in Serbia following the NATO bombing of 1999.  I myself share a reflection on how facilitation, and ICA’s ToP Participatory Strategic Planning process in particular, helped Oxfam in Lebanon last year embark on a complex and challenging change process in the midst of a complex and challenging response to the unfolding Syria crisis (see also Facilitating change in complexity).

Meanwhile, ICAI members continue to step up their peer-to-peer support and collaboration through means of online and regional ICA gatherings, and ICAI global working groups as well.  ICAs in East & Southern Africa met in Zimbabwe in March, ICAs of the Americas are now preparing to meet in Peru in May and ICAs of West Africa, Europe MENA and Asia Pacific are making plans for their own regional gatherings later in the year.

In order to enhance the reach and impact of our ToP facilitation approach worldwide, the ICAI global ToP working group is busy developing proposals to support implementation of the global ToP policy agreed last year, drawing on insights gleaned responses to a recent global ToP survey. The ICAI Board is pleased to have agreed a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) to promote and support greater collaboration between our two organizations, our respective members and our local groups around the world.

Thank you to all who have contributed to this new issue of Winds & Waves.  Enjoy this issue, and please share it and encourage others to do so.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
hyperlinks are to the regular online version
• President’s message

• Winds & Waves Masthead

• Behind the scenes

• Polish your writing skills

Facilitation

• Turning volunteers into social
movement by Rosemary Cairns

•The truth about life experience
By Richard West

• Designing a strategy  process
for Oxfamby Martin Gilbraith

• Setting sharp standards by Ann Epps

Training

•Life skills for building communities by Nelson Stover                              

Education

•Studying sports and mind-body
link in India by Nelson Stover

 ICA Reports

ICA NEPAL

• Rehab project brings hope to quake
victimsby Binita Subedi

ICA CHILE

• Working with the disabled in 2016by Isabel dela Maza

ICA PERU

• Economic plan inspires mountain towns by Gloria Santos and Jesusa Aburto

Perspectives

•Being present to life (English) by Teresa Sosa Vegas

•Estando Presente (Spanish) by Teresa Sosa Vegas

Poetry

•Manilamen: the ‘Outsiders’ within by Deborah Ruiz Wall

•The litmus test of Worth by Deborah Ruiz Wall

This post was first published in Winds and Waves, April 2016. For past issues, please visit our Winds and Waves archive.

Happy New Year from the ICAI Board

Global-Buzz-banner-1000x667-641x427Happy New Year from the ICAI Board to all ICAI members, and to all ICA friends and colleagues worldwide.  We are grateful for all your support for ICA’s global mission of advancing human development in 2015, and wish you the best for all of your activities in 2016.

Fourteen representatives of 10 member ICAs participated in two online ICAI General Assembly (GA) meetings on December 10, and seven of 10 current statutory member ICAs voted in the online GA poll over the following 10 days to December 20.  Thank you to all who participated.

As a result of the GA we are pleased to welcome two new Associate members to ICAI, both nominated by ICA Kenya with the support of ICA Tanzania and ICA Uganda, and both approved unanimously by the GA – NCOC Kenya (Nairobi Community Organisation Consultants) and SCR Kenya (Support for Community Response) are both led by long-time colleagues of ICA in Kenya.

During the GA meetings we heard updates from the ICAI Global ToP (Technology of Participation) policy working group and the ICAI Global Conference working group, and also discussed global communications and peer-to-peer support for new members of ICAI.

We are grateful to the 28 ICAs who have already responded to our recent global survey on members’ usage of, capacity for and aspirations for ToP facilitation methods, and to the Global ToP working group that is now analysing the responses in order to make recommendations for peer-to-peer support and collaboration among ICAs in implementing our new global ToP policy.  We urge members that have not yet responded to continue to do so – please contact us to ask for a link to the online survey form.

We are also grateful to the ICAI Global Conference working group for its work with Initiatives of Change (IofC) exploring possibilities for a joint conference in Human Development at IofC Caux in Switzerland or elsewhere, now perhaps in 2017 or 2018.

The December issue of ICAI’s Winds & Waves magazine ‘Climate Change‘ was published on the 25th, as a Christmas gift!  We are grateful as ever to the tireless editorial team, who work so hard to enable us to share stories and insights on human development  in this magazine three times each year.

I echo the appeal of Peter Ellins in this latest issue –please do contribute to the magazine in 2016, and please contact us if you may be interested in joining the team to support with commissioning, reporting, editing, layout and design, social media, or in any other way.

This post was written for ICAI’s monthly bulletin the Global Buzz, January 2016

 

 

ICAI Board report to the December General Assembly

strategic directionsThis short report to the upcoming  online  meetings of the ICAI General Assembly (GA) on 10 December was prepared to summarise the ICAI Board‘s activity since the last GA in July, relative to the 3 strategic directions of our 2015-16 strategy:

Fostering Global Connections & Collaboration to Support ICAs to Thrive

Support Peer-to-Peer Collaboration & Capacity Building

Facilitate Inclusive Global Communications

  • We have supported the Global Communications team to produce regular issues of Winds & Waves (W&W) magazine and the monthly bulletin the Global Buzz, and amplified distribution on social media
  • We have developed and launched a new website in WordPress and enabled member ICAs to post and update their own ICA Worldwide profiles and news updates – 11 ICA profiles updated to date, and W&W and Buzz updates cross-posted to the website
  • We have grown the ICAI presence on Facebook & Twitter and integrated them with the website
  • We have used the ICA Global channel on Youtube to host weekly online dialogues on development and disability, and  other topics

Gather, Synthesize & Share Info/Data of Value to our Membership

  • We have surveyed the global membership on their ToP facilitation capacity, use and aspirations for the Global ToP working group – 28 responses received to date

Develop & Strengthen Global Partnerships

  • We have agreed in principle to enter into a global partnership with IAF, and invited the Global ToP working group to respond to IAF’s draft Memorandum of Understanding

Boosting ICAI Resilience and Safeguarding the Integrity of our Global Community

Strengthen Organizational Resilience & Sustainability

  • We are developing more robust financial management and reporting systems – for this reason invoicing (and therefore payment) of member’s dues has been delayed, however all are now invoiced
  • We have received the investments that were left to ICAI as a legacy last year

Safeguard the Integrity of the Global Membership

  • We have welcomed 3 new members approved at July GA – SNF Uganda, ORP Korea & EPDI Nigeria
  • We have supported members & applicants for memberships to complete nomination papers for 2 new Associate members, NCOC Kenya & SCR Kenya
  • We have continued to work with prospective applicants in Russia (Moscow & Siberia), Poland, France & the Philippines
  • We have supported colleagues of NIRADO Nigeria and Itereleng Itereleng ICA South Africa working on renewing ICAs on those countries

Recognizing & Leveraging ICA Wisdom & Nurturing New Leadership

Recognize & Appreciate Contributions/ Achievements

  • We have regularly published available ICA news updates to new website

Strengthen and Share our Collective Wisdom & Approaches

Share & Nurture Global Leadership within the Membership

  • We have begun to prepare for ICAI Board nominations & elections process leading to election in June prior to face-to-face Board meeting at August Global Conference – may delay to election in December of Global Conference is postponed

Welcome to the new ICAI new website, launched today!

Welcome to the new ICAI website, launched today!  This new site is designed to provide an engaging platform for member ICAs and ICA colleagues to communicate with each other and with the wider world. We hope that you will like it, and and that you will use it and share it!

Everything that you used to find on the ICAI site is still available somewhere, including online archives of our Winds & Waves magazine and monthly news bulletin the Global Buzz.  If you can’t find what you are looking for, feel free to contact us to ask. Read on for an overview of some of what you can already find here, some of what is coming and some of what will be possible for the future.

On the Home page you will find the latest tweets and news updatates from ICAI and our members around the world, plus featured news posts and publications, and menus and a search function to help you to navigate the site.  You can also opt to have Google auto-translate the entire site into another language of your choice.  We may want to add a calendar here, for ICAI and members to publicise their events.

The news posts you will find already here are mostly drawn from recent issues of our current monthly bulletin the Global Buzz.  The new site will enable member ICAs to log in and post their news updates and photos directly, whenever they have news to share, and a monthly digest will then be emailed to Global Buzz subscribers.  There will be a role to play for volunteer editors to support members to do this, at least at first, and to monitor members’ own websites and social media posts for news and stories to re-publish here – so if you might be interested in such a role, please contact us.

About us is substantially updated to reflect how ICAI now operates since we introduced our present peer to peer approach in 2010.  Still to come soon are individual profiles for each Board member to complete and maintain, that will be linked to Our global Board and to Contact us.  I hope we will also add a members’ section here, to share internal ICA policy, governance and other documents with members only.

ICA Worldwide provides a platform for member ICAs to share and update their profiles, to connect with each other and enable others to connect with them.  At present it includes just a very limited profile of each member, drawn from their response to ICAI’s recent global membership survey (and in some cases from their own websites), and email contacts only for their ICAI representatives on our global email list. Over the coming weeks and months, ICAI Board members will be supporting members to log in to complete and update their profiles themselves by completing a simple form.  In future, members will be asked to update their profile at least annually, as they complete and update the annual membership survey in the same way.  Members will also be able to create additional pages and sub-pages (in whatever language they choose), in order to use their profile as a mini website of their own if they wish. I hope that we will be arrange also for members’ own news updates to appear on their own profile pages.

Conferences at present includes just a brief overview of the quadrennial Global Conference on Human Development that has ICAI has convened since 1984, and of the most recent hosted by ICA Nepal in 2012.  Our new 2016 Global Conference committee will be able to create and maintain additional pages here for our next conference.

Publications includes links to our archives of Winds & Waves magazine, the Global Buzz, and our pre-2010 newsletter Network Exchange, plus the 2012 book of ICA Nepal Changing Lives Changing Societies and the new 2015 ICA Handbook of Terry Bergdall od ICA USA.  Future issues of Winds & Waves magazine and other ICAI publications will be posted here, and ICAs will be encouraged and supported to post their own publications here as well.

ToP Facilitation includes an overview of ICA’s Technology of Participation facilitation methods, training and CTF certification, copied over from the ToP pages of the previous site, and links to ICA ToP training providers around the world.  Our new Global ToP Policy Working Group will be able to use these pages, and new pages here as needed, to communicate the new ICA global ToP policy that was adopted by GA in July and to support its implementation by members.  I hope we will also be able to add a twitter feed from @ToPfacilitation to this section, as we have from @ICAI on the Home page.

We are grateful to Robert Liverpool for sharing his WordPress skills and considerable volunteer time to build this site for us.  Now it is up to us to use it, make it our own and make it work for us!

We welcome your feedback or suggestions for the website, and any other queries. Most of all, we will welcome your commitment to co-create the site with us by entering and updating your own profiles, news posts and publications, and by reading, sharing and engaging with what you find here.  Please do share comments on the site, or contact us directly.

ICA International Board update, August 2015

ICAI Global Buzz, June 2015
This post was written for ICAI’s monthly bulletin the Global Buzz, August 2015.

The Institute of Cultural Affairs is a global community of non-profit organisations advancing human development worldwide. The ICAI network comprises member organisations and related groups in over 40 countries.  The role of ICA International is to facilitate peer-to-peer interchange, learning and mutual support across the network, for greater and deeper impact. ICA International maintains consultative status with UN ECOSOC, UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO & FAO.

The main event for the ICAI Board last month was the July General Assembly. Final preparations were concluded at the online Board meeting of July 8. An online GA meeting in Adobe Connect was repeated twice for two time zones on July 21, and attended by 20 representatives of 13 member ICAs. Finally, an asynchronous online poll was held by surveymonkey over 10 days to July 31, to confirm and symbolise the consensus of the General Assembly.  Nineteen representatives of 25 statutory members cast their ICAs’ votes in the poll.

GA screenshotFour resolutions were passed by the General Assembly:

  • the 2015-16 ICAI Strategic Directions developed by the May Board meeting in Tanzania were approved
  • three new nominations for non-voting Associate membership were approved – welcome to ICAI to ORP of Korea, EPDI of Nigeria and SNCF of Uganda!
  • a recommendation of the ICAI Global Conference working group was accepted, to seek to work in partnership with Initiaitives of Change to convene a global conference next year at IofC’s centre at Caux, Switzerland
  • a new global policy on ICA’s Technology of Participation was adopted, following 18 months of collaborative development and consultation among ICAs worldwide, led by the global ToP policy working group.

The online meetings provided a final opportunity to discuss these resolutions before the online poll. They also provided an opportunity for the Board and our volunteer web developer Robert Liverpool to share the new draft ICAI website that is under development in WordPress.  We are now testing and populating the website with content with a view to launching it publicly later in the year.

wordpress screenshot