The Art of Technique

White, Shirley A. The Art of Facilitating Participation:. Minneapolis: Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd, 2000. Print.

Overview of the essays in Part 2: The Art of Technique.

Shirley White's book 'The Art of Facilitating Participation', is the result of White facilitating a regular discussion group that stemmed from the prodding of her graduate students. This means she is metaphysically facilitating a book of essays on facilitation by students and practitioners in the field of facilitation. Her role in this book comes out quite clearly in the way she introduces the essays written by those in the discussion group. Though she has talked to many people on this topic and heard many stories of the same (or at least similar) lessons learned by so many students, she mentions the work of each of them as unique learning experiences and is honored to help share these stories with others.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section's essays are described in the last post; in this post I will focus on the second section: The Art of Technique. The word choice is intentional, and explained on p.22. Technology is vital, but technique and the application of technical proficiency is arguably more important. The 'art of technique' is the 'thoughtful articulation and interpretation of the need for technology, and the culturally sensitive way people are involved in assessing, acquiring, and applying that technology to benefit their development'. “Technique must serve the content of development and be the art that effectively promotes learning and effective communication.”

The first essay in this section is an interview between a young Colombian interested in participatory development and a widely recognized Colombian facilitator who has dedicated his life to participatory development: Orlando Fals Borda.. This is followed by Colverson's essay on her experiences using PAR (Participatory Action Research) with campesino women in two rural Honduranean communities. The next essay witnesses how successful an agricultural program in Nepal can be at implementing a participatory model. Galper proceeds this with an essay on the topic of empowerment via teaching basic statistics for understanding the processes the NGO is using to make decisions and how information from surveys are translated and used.

Three African writers team together to emphasize the benefits of training rural development facilitators via Participatory Rural Communication Appraisal (PRCA). This process is focused on built-in field work. Next, Renuka Bery proposes the discovery principle which states that learning by discovery stimulates individual development and thus, 'contribute to the mot important issues in their societies. Finally, we move into access to media technologies. “The importance of access to communication technologies and public media cannot be overstated as an important force in a community's development. Hochneimer discusses community radio and the issues surrounding community-based journalism, themes that are 'pertinent to any media system, and important tools for community building' (p. 27). Richardson follows with his essay on the considerations inherent to establishing a 'FreeSpace' network in Canada; his example has apparently led to a rural internet access to the poor in Peru, Mexico, and the Philippines. 'Communication relationships are no longer restricted by space., but access to communication resources is another matter.' (p.28)


Reflection

This book has inspired me to consider facilitating a forum, (at least initially) informal, on international development experiences of MIT students. The important qualities of this gathering would be student-sprouted and informative. This of course requires prior interest and students who would immediately view this as a valuable use of their time. If started correctly, with a precedent on student interest and informal yet useful exchange of ideas, (as well as possibly output), this could be a worthwhile pursuit. The output of such a gathering could be one of new ideas and opportunities horizontally traveling from one student to another. I am especially interested in having a space where international development can be delved into and researched without feeling the reigns of power often associated with the grants, paperwork, and rules that tends to define and limit access to development work by students. Of course, the fact that it does not yet exist leads one to believe that there may be a low enough percentage of students with this type of experience that such a gathering only has merit on the graduate level.

Stepping back we can see clearly that White is cleverly showing us what she means by effective facilitation by the actual form in which the book is produced. The book is facilitation at its best. However, it also is facilitation between presumably similarly-minded people with similar recent international exposure in the field of development. Each of them is interested in understanding the role of communication in development, so admittedly the students are not an accurate representation of the complexities in international development caused by vast formative discrepancies. Still, she is contextualizing the facilitation role to the academic environment, and the result seems to be an interesting collection of hope-giving accounts. It is possible that sometimes White goes overboard and says things like 'Kathy had become one of them...erased any apprehension they might have had' which is simply an overexaggeration.

I like how the author writes the book so that one can quickly find what essays they are interested in reading, and leave the rest. This is accomplished by dedicating one to three paragraphs to a brief, but long-enough description of right at the beginning. Doing something similar to my work might be an interesting approach to facilitating its applicability as a useful document to someone.

The Art of Participation

White, Shirley A. The Art of Facilitating Participation:. Minneapolis: Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd, 2000. Print.

p. 7-22: Introduction and an overview of Part I: The Art of Participation.

This book aims to catalyze improved participatory approaches to development, The focus is placed on the importance of proper facilitation, and does this by combining a set of different essays by White and others on the topic of findings on participatory development. White starts off with a broad generalization that NGOs spent the 90's talking about involving the socially excluded, but have yet tlo effectively do so (p. 16). In addition, development has become a business. “We quickly forget that development starts from the heart” (p.17). “Reaching across the barriers of diversity, power, caste, and class to touch the life force of a person and lift them to a 'higher ground' becomes the objective of the challenge” (p.18)

Underlying assumption of the book: 'communication is the foundation of participation'. With this as an anchor, the story introduces the array of essays that will be presented to the reader. Each of them is written from a practitioners standpoint, but with the academic integrity of a university graduate research department. Together, the essays provide a set of lessons learned from their personal experiences working in development around the world.

The first essay is by White and Nair, and it explains how the facilitator role is one of a catalyst communicator (CC). A CC is responsible for setting up an environment for continual learning and honing communication for building partnerships for participatory development. Kiiti and Nielsen's essay validates the use of reflective thinking as well as contextualized definitions of roles and purpose. Specifically this essay distinguishes between the role of a facilitator and an advocate, and the importance of the ability to fill both roles depending on the situation. This theme of facilitator vs advocate continues into the next essay, by Ndunge and Erik. This essay discusses how facilitating starts from where the community is at, whereas advocating often has an external motivation and paints near-sighted pictures.

Simone St. Anne follows with an essay on the importance of creativity in synergy, or connection, which is the key to autonomous participation. “Synergy is the spark that triggers thinking and helps form innovative connections to allow others to see what they see – that's the essence of creative collaboration.” (p. 21). This essay is followed by an essay on the enabling conditions of development communication for giving voice to different stakeholders to negotiate their positions and common interests. Then comes on essay that appears to be written by someone recently faced with the harsh divisions associated with development, choosing to write on the personality and character requirements for someone to be a quality facilitator. These include selflessness, willingness to take risks, commitment, persistence, sensitivity, and others that are difficult to understand without extended time working in the field of development (p.21). The last essay included in the section titled the Art of Participation is by Jim Lees and Sonali Ojha who write it while in the midst of a project trying to do participation-based work in the midst of the harsh conditions of the streets of Mumbai.

Reflection

Interesting, how the book 'Autonomous Development' has affected the reading of this story. As much as Autonomous Development appears to be academic and critical in an almost witty way, White's book is much more open, personable, and lightly written. For this reason, her book is soaked with phrases that Carmen, the author of Autonomous Development, would and does tear apart in his book on the failings of participatory development. Of course, in some ways they are acknowledging the same failings, only in very different manners and with very different messages. One example of this is where White talks about 'reaching across' divisions of all kinds and 'lifting' people to a 'higher ground'. Carmen would point out that lifting implies that we are in control and thus are actually reinforcing those very stark power differences.

The essays listed included in this book are very interesting to me. It seems like an interesting opening The introduction to the essay by Ndunge and Erik is interesting because it seems to hint that facilitators are important in bridging the gap between the development goals of the outside world and the sheltered way of life of the people being developed. I certainly hope they would not agree with this assessment, but I wonder if it is not a subconscious reality in the minds of many development workers, especially those with academic training. I also am really excited to read the essay about using creativity to connect to people.

Candid thoughts on the Not-so candid Camera

White, Shirley, ed. Participatory Video: Images that Transform and Empower. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003. 412 pp. ISBN 0761997636

Chapter 7: "Candid thoughts on the Not-so candid Camera: How Video Documentation Radically Alters Development Projects" by Barbara Seidl

In this chapter Seidl uses her own PV experiences from the past 10 years to outline some of the positive and negative impacts from the presence of a camera in development projects. Within the 3 stages of documentation (pre-production, production, and screening), there are many intentional and unintentional changes that occur due to the camera team. Seidl focuses heavily on bias.

In cases of public broadcasting, there is the bias of the audience as well as the director. Depending on the topic of the research or audience, the frame excludes a large amount of potentially interesting and educational material (p. 162). The director's bias, "operationally, ... means that while documenting someone else's story [the director] knows what is and is not important (p. 162). Many of the below positives and negatives are a result of bias.

Pre-production benefits include (1) focusing of mission, by asking for a definite mission, (2) clear identification of leadership, (3) clear identification of priorities,(4) increase in project's productivity,and (5) increase in organization's credibility.
Pre-production hazards include (1) inadvertently changing the leadership structure, (3) discovering disagreement about the mission or objectives, and (4) Diluting the power of the story.

Production benefits include (1) increased exposure and (2) creation of an opportunity to publicly recognize supporters, leaders, and participants
Production hazards include (1) creation of a very visible and public forum for dissention and (2) a radical drop in productivity because of the presence of the camera.

Chapter 4: "Participatory Video that Empowers" - Renuka Bery

Through the power of the video maker's ability to engage viewers to internalize stories, redefine issues, and take initiative to exercise their own power, "PV helps to rearticulate the locus of power within individual communities and ultimately politics." (p. 103). Empowerment is not inherent to PV, and in fact, is only a tool for achieving an empowered status. The author outlines many steps towards achieving empowerment through the use of PV. reminding the reader that "the strength of the tool is only as powerful as the person wielding it." (p. 105).

Reflection

Contrary to my style with the other books, largely due to the prodding of a friend I delved into this book by first picking out the seemingly most relevant chapters.

In chapter 4, Bery unashamedly refers to PV as though it is completely contained within the realm of successful empowerment strategy, without bothering to remind the reader that this is only under very certain conditions. For instance, she uses the example of a woman interviewing politicians with a camera as giving her an immediate shift in power as she was suddenly noticed by the politicians. This may be an extreme example but it certainly illustrates the point. In this case, she does not bother to mention why the woman was interviewing the politicians, and how much of it was her own initiative, and whether or not she had prior experience in journalism, etc.

If there is one thing that my summer fieldwork taught me, it is that although PV has the potential to disturb the power balance, I don't really think that the immediate impact of physical cameras on the power dynamics in a rural Third World community is likely to be a positive one. Logically, power structures can only be changed as quickly as new ones can be rebuilt and old ones torn down. The introduction of PV into a community, however, is much more immediate, and therefore incapable of fundamentally affecting power structures in a sustainable fashion. On the contrary, immediate effects seem intuitively more likely t0 disturb the structure just enough to agitate it into action, with the more powerful agents feeling threatened.