Encouraging
questions and answers:
For the session to be ‘participatory’
and active, it is a advisable to give the participants questions
and issues to think about. A useful way of doing that would
be ask the participants to reflect on the question given by
you and to write down their thoughts on a piece of paper;
or ask them to divide themselves into small groups and discuss
the issue group wise. It will be helpful to ask the questions
to the participants like, “let’s suppose…”
or “if you were in such a situation….” to
encourage contribution from them. Questions help to clarify
the topic (the social issue) and help the participants in
exploring how they might want to tackle the problem.
Working with other
facilitators:
There are many advantages to
working with other facilitators as a team. Some of those are:
- Since there
are many tasks that you would be juggling in a session,
it is helpful to share the session with another facilitator
- There are
more creative ideas to conduct a session with more than
one facilitator.
- By complementing
each other’s input, there are lesser chances of forgetting
any key points of learning during the session
- The participants
will be more active and concentrated in the discussion if
the facilitators have different styles and natures, for
example if one is calm and the other is energetic
- At least one of the facilitators
should be from the same community as the participants as
then the participants can relate to the discussion and the
facilitator would understand their background well
- Facilitators can work together
on organizing the documentation
- They can motivate each other
- They can provide better
support to youth at different times
It is important that the participants
see the group of facilitators working together and not at
conflict with each other. The facilitators should make sure
before the start of the sessions/projects that their conducting
styles are complementary to each other. If the styles are
conflicting, for example, if one facilitator is very strict
and the other very flexible, the participants are bound to
get confused. The facilitators have to agree on the content,
principles, process and timing of sessions and sharing of
responsibilities prior to the beginning of any session.
We welcome new ideas on this
topic from our readers and activists. If you have any suggestions,
please send us your contributions to yan@media.mit.edu.
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