Facilitating groups

Currently I've been doing some group facilitation and it's been a great experience.

Indeed, for a number of years now, I've facilitated group work either on my own account or working alongside other people. I've undertaken this work for clients such as Te Pou (New Zealand's main disability workforce training organisation) and more recently for the New Zealand Disability Support Network (NZDSN).

There are a number of skills that facilitators need in order to be successful. They include the ability to actively listen, facilitate large and small groups of people (whether they be learners or meeting participants) and guiding, indeed empowering people to take action on their own account or as a group to continue their learning and/or improve something in their community.

I've been learning about facilitation from some great people, including a very experienced, professional Dunedin-based facilitator Margy-Jean Malcolm. Indeed, I've been privileged to work alongside her in co-facilitating the Enabling Good Lives Communities of Practice locally which is where disability service providers, disabled people and their families/whanau come together to learn about and share information on a new way of delivering support for people like myself who live with disability and our families.

One of the things I'm aiming for with Fordwrite is to expand my facilitation experience further and to offer this as a service on my account in the future. I plan to continue my skill development in this area (as it's an evolving field) to the extent that I can do so as an individual.

In the meantime, I'm learning from some great people, such as Margy-Jean, the art of being a really good facilitator.