Facilitation in different languages – #IAFpodcast FS18

#iafpodcast

This week’s episode of the #IAFpodcast Facilitation Stories features a fascinating conversation on Working in Different Languages in facilitation – I am grateful to podcast co-hosts @PilarOrti and @HeleneJewell for the opportunity to join in, this time also with Simon Wilson CPF|M  of @WilsonSherriff.

Listen now, or see the show notes below first for what to expect – and do check out the previous episodes and subscribe for the next at Facilitation Stories – or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts


Pilar Orti writes in the FS18 show notes…

Helene Jewell, podcast co-host and freelance facilitator based in Bristol, Martin Gilbraith (CPF facilitator and trainer and consultant based in London – who also took part in Episode 7 on facilitation values), Simon Wilson has been running facilitation company for 20 years CPF working internationally and in the UK, based in the Peak District.

The podcast starts with some examples of working with people who speak different languages.

Simon shares a story about working with a UN agency 5 years ago doing a mix of facilitation and training over 20 sessions. Virtual sessions using Webex platform in English, French and Spanish and Simon co-facilitated all of these. He talks about his different levels of competence in these languages and the different dynamics and energy. He used Google Translate to help him and when he was speaking in English which was often not the native language for many participants he had to keep his language simple and avoid too many metaphors.

Helene talks about her time in Nepal as a VSO volunteer Speech and Language Therapist where she delivered lots of different training sessions. She explains that although she had learnt Nepali she initially lacked the confidence to use it initially and how she got through that. And the difficulties of there being “side talk” in another language in the room (Newari).

Martin talks about a Middle East regional gathering for a global NGO – 60 people over 3 days. Martin began his career as an international volunteer for ICA and learnt Arabic in Egypt so still enjoys joining in conversations when he can.  He explains why even though he could speak Arabic he had to hold his tongue so as not to exclude the non- Arabic speakers.

Working with interpreters

Simon talks about how developing a relationship with interpreters is a key part of facilitating and how he has a relatively relaxed attitude to losing nuances in translation. He describes how getting interpreters involved in the processes can be helpful and shares an example of a large event he facilitated in Istanbul with 7 different languages that involved interpreters and how it felt a but chaotic but ended up being very collaborative.

Martin talks about whether the interpretation is needed for the facilitator or the participants. He describes a conference in Switzerland which had several different languages that often had interpreters in booths and mediated by technology. The parts that he facilitated were much more participatory and encouraged people to work together at tables, even if they didn’t understand each other’s languages. He notes how this allows communication and connection at a human level even without any language in common.

Helene talks about her experience of being an interpreter with the ICRC for delegates during the conflict in Nepal. She talks about translating every single work (or not) and how as an interpreter it enabled her to concentrate on the spoken words and not get too emotional about the content. She also observed how much the delegates would begin to pick up for themselves even when they didn’t understand the language.

Martin comments that in training facilitation, working with interpreters who don’t understand facilitation is problematic and conversely working with interpreters who are facilitators can sometimes give their own explanations which can also be problematic.

Martin gives a shout out to Mikhael Rossus from Personal Image in Moscow, he is a facilitator and know the ICA’s ToP facilitation really well, and is really good at translating what is said and not giving his own interpretation.

Simon comments on interpretation in virtual and how he has had experienced where it often looks like the participants aren’t there as they are sat to the side of the interpreter who is visible on the screen. He also talks about text translation closed caption text in Googlish which is “almost communication”.

Martin talks about having ideas written in both languages and how you need to be careful in mis-translations when they are written down that they mean the same thing.

Helene talks about working in Devanagari script and how writing and training and facilitating was not something she could efficiently do, so she involved participants to help her.

Simon talks about co-facilitation and working with Jean from FormApart mainly in French and discovering new words in another language that might not be present in your own language. He has also brought the warmth he discovered from Anna in Peru to his English sessions – he has never net her but has developed a connection nonetheless.

Martin recalls working in Russia and how certain phrases don’t mean what you want them to mean if you are not careful – “I want to break you into small groups” can sound painful!

Simon talks about having good French but not having the facilitation words so bringing your language up to date is important.

Pilar herself has learnt all her professional language in English but has been working recently in Spanish (her native language) but doesn’t necessarily have the words.

Helene and Martin both gave examples of when words do not exist in different languages.

Pilar returns to Helene’s comments about working in groups where two languages were spoken and she only understood one (Nepali and Newari) and how she didn’t ever really resolve the difficulties they presented but somehow got around them.

Martin talks about being quite relaxed about not understanding side conversations and that if he misses something he encourages participants to draw his attention to it. And the fact that a lot can be understood without being able to speak the language. He shares an example of working with ICA in Bosnia and how although he didn’t know the language he was able to work out what was going on as he was familiar with the materials and approaches.

Simon recalls some early IAF conferences running facilitated development sessions with different language groups. and that checking with the group that everything is okay is often enough. But when the objective is developing a common understanding then different language groups can be a barrier and how it’s harder to push across language barriers but this is the role of the facilitator.

Martin reminds us that the role of the facilitator anyway is to know when to step in and push people across their comfort zone and when is better to help people stay in their comfort zone.

Helene comments on how even when people don’t share a common language they will usually find a way.

Martin talks about helping a group of different language speakers to come up with a mission statement in English but that for it to make sense in different language (25/30 different languages in this case) they closed the session with coming up with versions in their own languages.

What have these experiences taught us?

Helene talks about how when everyone has to work hard to understand or help others understand a language there can be a feeling of being all in it together. And about confidence and getting on with it.

Simon talks about how co-facilitation being a joy and how it reinforces and challenges his practice and that language barriers can usually be transcended. This is harder in the virtual world.

Martin talks about the fact that there are joys and struggles with working in different languages, but that language and culture are just two different dimensions of diversity. As a facilitator our job is to accommodate diversity as best as we can all the time.

Get in touch via email podcast@iaf-englandwales.org – Send us some text, or even an mp3 audio! Find out more about us over at the England & Wales page on https://www.iaf-world.org.


See also about me, how I work, who I work with and recommendations & case studies, and please contact me about how we might work together. Please do not delay before contacting me – the earlier I hear from you, the more chance that I will be able to help and the more helpful I may be able to be.

Register now on Eventbrite also for my regularly scheduled ToP facilitation training courses in London and Brussels, and now also online.

Exploring the human factor in global change, and prospects for partnership, at Caux

This post was written for ICAI Winds and Waves, September 2015 issue.


Caux PalaceThe week before last I was in Switzerland to support the design and facilitation of Addressing Europe’s Unfinished Business, a conference of Initiatives of Change (IofC) at Caux Palace – a fairy-tale castle of an international conference centre, high above Montreux and enjoying stupendous views down along Lake Geneva.  As luck would have it, Jonathan Dudding of ICA:UK was there the same week supporting the parallel International Peacebuilders Forum conference, and world leaders of IofC International were beginning to gather for their IofC Global Assembly the following week. As a result, Jonathan and I were able to meet together with leaders of IofC Caux and IofC International to discuss prospects for a global partnership conference of ICA and IofC at Caux next year.

I came away (‘down from the mountain’, as they say with good reason at Caux) encouraged and enthused for the prospects of such a partnership – by my experience of the conference and the conference centre, and by what I learned of IofC and the commonalities and potential for synergies between it and ICA.  I am excited therefore that, since then, ICA International has decided in its online General Assembly in the last week to seek to develop such a partnership with IofC. So, how did such a proposal come about, and what can I say from my own experience at Caux about how I see the prospects for such a partnership?

ICA:UK and ICA Spain have partnered with IofC Caux over several years now to support the design and facilitation of their annual summer season of international conferences, and in providing ‘Technology of Participation’ (ToP) facilitation training for IofC members and others – next scheduled for 25-26 November in Geneva. Other connections and collaborations between individual members of ICA and IofC around the world date back over 30 years in some cases, in countries including Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and Ukraine. Ideas for building on these foundations to explore the potential for broader collaboration have been brewing for a year or two among those involved on both sides.

A partnership approach to a global conference in Caux in 2016 was proposed to ICAI last December by ICA:UK, with the support of ICA Spain and other European ICAs, to follow ICAI’s 8th quadrennial Global Conference on Human Development in Kathmandu in 2012.  This proposal was recommended to the ICAI General Assembly by its Global Conference working group, and approved in principle this last week. Parallel conversations have been underway within IofC, including at its recent Global Assembly in Caux, and we hope to be able establish a joint committee in the autumn to develop a partnership and our approach to the conference together.

I have found numerous encouraging parallels in our respective histories and approaches. Initiatives of Change describes itself as ‘a world-wide movement of people of diverse cultures and backgrounds, who are committed to the transformation of society through changes in human motives and behaviour, starting with their own’. It was founded in the late 1930s as the Moral Rearmament Movement by Frank Buchman, a charismatic American minister whose ideas and practices had been developed largely working with students in what had been known as the Oxford Group. The once-grand but then derelict Caux Palace Hotel was purchased and refurbished by Swiss supporters, in time to open in 1946 as an international conference centre where those who had suffered in the war could come together and build new relationships. Further centres were established in the USA and around the world, supporting reconciliation and peace-building through dialogue and, particularly at the Westminster Theatre in London, also through drama.  Today IofC international comprises member organisations in around 40 countries worldwide. IofC Caux hosts a series of international conferences over three months every summer, under the banner “Exploring the human factor in global change” and with the aim “to inspire, equip and connect people to address world needs, starting with themselves”.

ICA (the Institute of Cultural Affairs) was founded somewhat later, but also from a faith-based movement, as the secular successor organisation to the earlier Ecumenical Institute and University-based Faith and Life Community founded by the American former Methodist minister Joseph Wesley Mathews in the 1950s & 60s. ICA describes itself as a global community of non-profit organisations ‘advancing human development worldwide’ – sharing a ‘concern with the human factor in world development’ and seeking to mobilise and support individuals to transform themselves in order to transform their communities, organisations and societies (‘Changing Lives, Changing Societies‘). ICA pioneered its approach, including ‘imaginal education’ and what became known as the ‘Technology of Participation’ facilitation methods, in the west side of Chicago in the 1960s. ICA USA’s GreenRise building in Chicago was rescued from dereliction by volunteer labour and in-kind contributions in the early 1970s, to serve for many years as ICAs global headquarters and venue for its annual summer Global Research Assemblies, forerunners to the quadrennial ICA Global Conference on Human Development since 1984.  The ‘Band of 24’ pilot Human Development Projects in each of the 24 time zones worldwide, launched in 1976 (40 years ago next year), became the basis of today’s network of member organisations and groups in around 40 countries – about half of them countries in common with IofC.

My experience of the AEUB conference at Caux suggests that we have more in common than aspects of our histories, the language we use to describe our approaches, and our shared vision of a just and sustainable world for all.  Participants familiar with ICA’s centres in Chicago, Brussels and elsewhere, and with our tradition of living and working together in community, will welcome the expectation at Caux that everyone contributes to the care of the community and broadens and deepens their relationships by taking part in kitchen duties together. They will also welcome the time for collective reflection and for other spirit practice that is scheduled daily at Caux, as a reflection of ICA’s tradition and practice as well. They may be pleased to find that most bedrooms in the former Caux Palace Hotel have their own bathrooms (unlike many ICA facilities of the same era), and they will likely find the simple and even antique furnishings and fixtures as charming as I did. Certainly few visitors will fail to be impressed by the views from their windows and balconies, and from the garden and terrace below – the mountain location, accessed by funicular from the lakeside, was well chosen indeed for a retreat centre.

I hope that we may find plenty to learn from our differences, as well as our similarities. Whereas ICA’s focus is primarily on community and more recently organisational development, and through demonstration projects engaging the disempowered, I understand that IofC’s focus is primarily on reconciliation and peace-building, and through dialogue engaging citizens with those in power. I expect that IofC’s activities and emphases have diversified over time and geography as ICA’s have, however, and that our own people and our partners worldwide would find much to share with and learn from each other on their diverse experiences of leadership and change in their own contexts.

AEUB opening plenaryFrom a practical point of view, I think ICA could benefit greatly from Caux’s well established year-round capacity to manage the logistics of conference organisation, from handling international registrations and finances to mobilising and managing teams of summer interns and volunteer interpreters. I expect IofC could also benefit more from ICA’s participatory process design and facilitation expertise, as it has begun to do in recent years for its own conferences. The venue itself I found to be well equipped with a wide variety of spaces and facilities, from small break-out rooms and gallery spaces, terraces and gardens, to a tiered auditorium, a large and fully-equipped theatre and of course the Grand Hall. I understand that the capacity of around 400 in total allows comfortably for around 270 conference delegates at a time, in addition to the many resident volunteers, staff and other visitors.

This year’s AEUB conference seemed to me to be very well received by its impressively international, multi-lingual and multi-generational participants.  I look forward to being able to share in making the ‘magic of Caux’ again in future conferences – starting, I hope, with a 2016 partnership conference ‘exploring the human factor’ in global change and development.

For more on Initiatives of Change at Caux, find them on twitter, flickr and youtube.

ToP facilitation and Lessons from the Village

This article was written for ICAI Winds and Waves, April 2015 issue.

Welcome to this new issue of Winds & Waves, the online magazine of ICA International, entitled ‘Lessons from the Village’.

ICA is perhaps most widely known today for its group facilitation methodology the Technology of Participation (ToP). This proven approach is applied by many hundreds if not thousands of professional facilitators around the world, to help groups to connect, learn and collaborate together in a wide variety of contexts. The International Association of Facilitators was founded in 1994 by some seventy such ToP facilitators, and many ICAs around the world today provide professional facilitation, training and consulting services to clients on a social enterprise basis, specialising in the ToP approach.  ICAI members ICA USA and ICA Associates and the ToP Network are proud to sponsor this year’s upcoming IAF North America conference in Banff, Canada, from May 14-16.  But what has all this got to do with Lessons from the Village?

Jawale village viewThe methods and tools of the Technology of Participation have been developed and refined by ICA in over 50 years of experience working in grassroots rural community development, in villages around the world. Most if not all ICAs continue to apply this approach to empower poor and marginalised people to participate meaningfully in bringing about positive change for themselves, for their communities and for the world, even as these ICAs work with other approaches and in other contexts as well.  There is more to the Technology of Participation than the methods and tools, and there is more to ICA than ToP, but it might be fair to say that ToP is among the most enduring of the Lessons from the Village that ICA has learned in its first half century.

Jawale ICA centreThis issue begins with a series of stories (pages 4, 8 & 10) of ICA colleagues revisiting today the Indian villages in which they were involved in ICA’s pioneering of the ToP approach in the rural Human Development Projects of the 1970s and 1980s. I began my own journey with ICA (and as a facilitator) as a fresh-faced international volunteer in one of these very villages in 1986, so I share a few of my own archive photos of Jawale here as well. Emerging lessons from these stories include the impact of urbanisation, the importance of connecting communities with local authorities, and the importance of values and methods to inspire, mobilise and empower volunteers.

Jawale ICA staff teamAlso in this issue you will find stories of peer-to-peer collaboration between ICAs today, including a youth media project involving students in Nepal and the USA (page 16); an online event on cross-border peace-building of ICA Ukraine with ICA Taiwan (page 23); and lessons learned by Global Facilitators Serving Communities on the role that ToP facilitation can play in supporting the recovery process and resilience of communities affected by disaster (page 20).

Jawale 9 programmes chartAs our colleagues of ICA Nepal now respond to the impact of April’s devastating earthquake, in Kathmandu and in rural areas, we encouarge you to show your support by responding to the appeal that they have launched – for details see page 28 and ICA Nepal on Facebook, and donate online now.  Many more of ICA’s Lessons from the Village can be found in the 2012 book of ICA Nepal ‘Changing Lives Changing Societies‘, published in conjunction with the 8th ICA Global Conference on Human Development hosted by ICA Nepal in Kathmandu.

This 11th issue of Winds and Waves is the last to be co-edited and laid out by John Miesen of ICA Australia, after some 30 years involvement in ICA publications in Australia and internationally. On behalf of the Board and ICAI as a whole, I thank John wholeheartedly for his years of service, and in particular for his central role in establishing Winds and Waves as ICAI’s flagship publication and a key tool of our peer-to-peer approach to facilitaing mutual support, learning and collaboration among ICAs.

The ICAI Board will meet face-to-face in Tanzania in May, prior to a regional gathering of East & Southern African ICAs. We plan to meet virtually during that time with the ICAI global communications team, to plan for the continuity and development of this magazine and our communications more generally, in the light of the new ICAI website and blog that is now in development in WordPress.

Please do contribute your own stories of advancing human development around the world to the next issue of Winds and Waves in August.

Please also get in touch 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.

Enjoy this issue!

Changing Lives Changing Societies

2nd edition now available online worldwide via Amazon!

ICA International Board update, June 2013

Global BuzzThis post was first published in ICAI’s monthly bulletin the Global Buzz.

This past month the ICAI Board has mostly been busy with preparing to launch a major new survey of the ICA global network.  This is intended primarily to help ICAs and ICA people to know each other better, to facilitate peer to peer support and collaboration. It also includes questions to indicate how ICAs meet the ICAI membership criteria, to enable the ICAI Board and GA to monitor that and take membership decisions, and questions on UN activity to enable ICAI to report on that to maintain our UN status.  Thank you to the many people from around the world who provided rich feedback on the draft survey, we were delighted that we heard from so many of you.  We are now finalising and translating the revisions to the survey, in order to circulate the survey very soon to around 40 locations, in English, French and Spanish.

We have begun some initial conversations with ICAI’s volunteer communications team in order to look at developing and streamlining our website, publications and  communications more broadly.  We are now scheduling a larger online meeting to take this forward, so please get in touch if you have expertise in this area and might be willing to get involved.

We have approved a proof of the second edition of Changing Lives Changing Societies: ICA’s Experience in Nepal and the World, and we are expecting it to be available soon worldwide on a print-on-demand basis from Amazon and other retailers.

The ICAI 2012 audit report has been drafted and will be ready to circulate shortly – we are grateful to Bill Staples and ICA Canada for their support with this.

We are now scheduling the next online regional gatherings in late August.  These are an opportunity for all involved or interested in ICA globally to connect with each other and with ICAI, to facilitate peer-to-peer support and collaboration in our shared mission of advancing human development worldwide.  Please join us if you can! There will be three gatherings at different times of day to suit the three regions – the earlier time for Asia, the middle time for Europe/MENA/Africa and the later time for the Americas.  However you are welcome to attend whichever suits you best (or more than one), and the exact times can also be adjusted if needed. Please follow the link below to indicate which dates and times would suit you best, wherever you are – please respond to the poll by Monday 17 June at http://www.doodle.com/n9e96ncscy5v5854

The aims & agenda of the gatherings will be broadly as in March:

Meeting Aims
1.    to connect ICAs and ICA colleagues with each other, and help to build & strengthen relationships between them
2.    to share information and facilitate peer-to-peer support and collaboration among ICAs and ICA colleagues
3.    to hold ICAI accountable to its members, and seek input & support to strengthen our global network and advance our global mission

Meeting agenda
1.    opening, welcome & introductions
2.    review & agree agenda
3.    ICA reports – highlights, questions & reflection
4.    ICAI report – membership, activity & finance; questions, feedback & reflection
5.    Items particular to each meeting:
a.    Global network survey findings
b.    Global communications
6.    Reflection & close

We look forward to hearing from you!