New how-to guide for training facilitators

A tool essential to helping people talk and work together productively

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January 23, 2007 | | Pomfret, Connecticut

Leading respectful and productive discussions that link to change on some of today’s most pressing public problems calls for skilled facilitators. To help trainers prepare effective facilitators, the Study Circles Resource Center has developed a second edition of A Guide for Training Study Circle Facilitators.

This training curriculum is designed to prepare leaders to facilitate study circle discussions and other community conversations that support and strengthen community change. The guide can also be used in training people to convene public meetings or workplace discussions that use small-group dialogue.

“Facilitators are essential to the quality of democratic discussions,” says Sarah vL. Campbell, SCRC’s senior program director and author of A Guide for Training Study Circle Facilitators. “This second edition reflects lessons we’ve learned over a number of years while working with large-scale, public dialogue programs around the country. The guide’s comprehensive training curriculum will help trainers provide facilitators with skills to lead discussions on issues from racism to town budgets.”

The second edition of A Guide for Training Study Circle Facilitators offers new skill-building lessons, comprehensive support materials for training, evaluation tools, and advice on establishing an on-going training program. It also includes a youth facilitator training agenda and advice on facilitating cross-cultural communication.

“This is a resource that should be in every community,” says Roseann Mason, Diversity Circles director at the Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha, Wis. “Over the last several years, we used SCRC’s first edition guide to train more than 250 youth and adults as facilitators for our community’s Diversity Circles program. I hope to build an even stronger facilitator training program using the new tools and resources featured in the new guide.”

A Guide for Training Study Circle Facilitators is available for purchase from SCRC. The publication can be downloaded for free at www.studycircles.org. SCRC offers facilitator trainings to communities that are organizing study circle programs.

The Study Circles Resource Center is a national organization that helps local communities develop their own ability to organize large-scale, diverse dialogue that is structured to support and strengthen measurable community change. Created in 1989 by The Paul J. Aicher Foundation, SCRC has worked with more than 400 communities nationwide on many different public issues.