Facilitation skills for community management

Article derived from "Supporting community management of rural water supplies": Community management is about helping people in preparing actions that are often felt to be the responsibility of ’the government’ or the donor agency. Supporting community management is about facilitating a community dialogue and decision-making processes with tool such as meeting and Focus Group discussion. The effectiveness of the tools depends to a large extend on the facilitator’s ability to grasp local concerns and to create an atmosphere that is conducive to mutual exchanges of experience and flexibility. Good facilitation is an art, requiring your sensitivity, creativity and flexibility. A facilitator will probably have to be patient listener and will use mediation and diplomacy. The ability to encourage people to discuss issues among themselves without starting to fight, and to help people look from various angles and weigh different solutions will also be important in the community management.

Building a relationship with the community of mutual trust and respect is of course a first requirement. To achieve the command of local language will be very useful as well as the capacity to remain independent and not to take sides. Sincere curiosity, in the sense of wanting to know more about the people you work with and the environment they live in, will help build a good relationship. Some people are curious by nature, others are less so. Persons belonging to the latter category should be careful with not taking anything seen or heard for granted, but should ask for explanations and background information. Initially, this may feel awkward and unnatural, but experience shows that it creates a good atmosphere. In response to such interest, people feel respected. It will bring to the facilitator and community members a wealth of useful insights.

An important element of facilitating a discussion is to pose open questions rather than closed or leading ones. Closed questions are those to which you will often get a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as an answer. For example, a question such as ‘do women attend the meetings of the water committee?’ Just ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will provide with very limited information. It does not show whether or not the respondent understood the question. Neither will it give him/her food for thought. An open question such as ‘what do you think the composition of the water committee should be?’ invites people to voice their own opinion and the answer will clearly show whether the question was understood.

A very sensitive issue is to stop talkative people without offending them and to encourage less talkative people without embarrassing them. Summarising a discussion at regular intervals will help people to keep track of what has been said and to prepare for decision-making. Community members can draw their own conclusions from a discussion and then take the necessary decisions. Communities should be allowed time both during and between meetings to discuss issues among themselves without the facilitator being around. Giving things a second thought without feeling pressed by the need to take decisions, may lead to better ideas. Making notes every day by summarising information (such as by drawing charts and diagrams) helps to analyse it and to compare information from different sources. The sharing of the analysis with the people who gave the information and their view on the contradictions risen between different parties will probably help in understanding the situation.