What is a Facilitator?

 A facilitator is a guide who helps individuals move through a process together. Facilitators are there to draw out opinions and ideas of members, not give opinions. As a facilitator you want to make sure individuals feel comfortable with sharing, and understand what they are there to do as a whole in order to achieve the goal in a productive way. Facilitators are responsible for creating a safe, productive space for all involved. This means being able to handle conflict and emotion that evolves in these conversations as well as participating in active listening. There are many models facilitators may use to implement plans and at times one plan may require several different models along with other tools in order to reach their goal at hand. Note taking is also a critical part of facilitating which helps the facilitator not only collect data but connect ideas. In a course known as Facilitating Public Processes (SCOM 447), I learned how to become a facilitator. Due to this course I was able to take the opportunity and work with two different clients in Harrisonburg, VA.

Harrisonburg's Farmers Market

Myself and four other facilitators, pictured on the left, took the opportunity to facilitate Harrisonburg's Farmers Market. The market occurs on Tuesday's and Saturday's in downtown Harrisonburg, VA. Our client, the manager of the market, asked us to research information on why people love the market along with future aspirations they may have for the market. We found a creative way to facilitate this event by using a pop-up dialogue method. We also used an online survey that was posted in the markets newsletter. To see our plan, click the link below "Facilitation Plan". To see our report in which we break down data, click "client report". 

Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference 

Five facilitators and myself, pictured on the right, volunteered our time to help facilitate the Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference. This conference was co-sponsered by Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric & Composition. Our goal was to help our client, members and board members, consider challenges and opportunities for future conferences by coming up with questions to ask for various topics. We used six topics that our facilitation head, Rob Alexander, developed with the conference panel. To learn more about this facilitation, click the link below "Feminisms and Rhetorics". In order to see our findings through our facilitation notes, click "Facilitation Findings".