Facilitation Training

Some of the Soliya alumni are now participating in training to become facilitators. This is quite a different experience from actually participating in the Connect program as you are learning the skills required to be able to facilitate group discussions. The faciliator's role is not an easy one, for though we all have opinions, it is impossible not to have them, your role as a facilitator is to be 'multipartial', not to join in the discussion with your opinion, or to present solutions, but to enable the participants to engage in dialogue, to create a safe environment where they feel they can say what they really think, ask all the questions they need to ask, and your role is to help them take the discussion deeper!
Just as writing diaries helped you during the Connect program, so it will during your facilitation training, so I strongly encourage you to continue contributing to this blog, with feedback about your training. To start with you could write a reply to this post with your first impressions, since you all started last week :-)