Section 3 Before the Group Meets: Personal Preparation by Facilitators

Examine the extent to which you, as a facilitator, believe that in new relationships of trust people change?

You are invited:

• to take the opportunity to listen to different others expressing opinions and exploring differences within the group.
• to create more space for learners in a group to find their voice, examine their reasons and exercise their choices.
• to find ways that support our common learning in respect of supporting diverse, interdependent communities.

In order to work in this manner, we suggest that you, as the facilitator, reflect on the material, and its significance for yourself, prior to each of the sessions. In this way you seek to become clearer in your own mind about the themes that emerge for yourself and any difficulties the material poses for you.

Having done so, you are then more able to be free with group members, and more able to assist them meet together around themes that are important for them.

Your experience of life, all of it, is part of who you are. It is this that you and your fellow learners bring to the learning event.

Clarifying Your Own Value Base

You are invited to take time:

• To acknowledge your own values and your responses to others holding different values.
• To explore the challenge and opportunities of welcoming diversity in different societies.

Understanding How Distrust and Fear can Shape Relations in Conflict Affected Societies

You are invited to prepare yourself to facilitate diverse learning groups associated with the Nurturing Hope materials by:

• Exploring your individual formation and how it has impacted on your behaviour and treatment of different others.
• Examining your responses to some of the dynamics associated with conflict affected societies¹.
• Exploring the emotional challenges you face of living in sometimes diverse and often conflict-affected societies.

1 See “Experiences of Meeting Together from Northern Ireland and other contested societies” in Appendices.