Community Based Facilitation

Community Studies or Mahaleh Studies

2011-02-24T04:33:00.000-08:00

Today, I was just moving around in UM library, and I found a book entitled: Community Studies. The book edited by Colin Bell and Howard Newby was first published in 1971. The book opens discussions on community that "was thought to be a good thing", however "its passing was to be deplored, feared and regretted." The author continues to find community position within the whole literature of eighteen to twentieth century. When reading that, I was thinking why we have not tried to look carefully at our notion of "mahaleh" in our own Iranian culture; a notion that now Tehran Municipality is trying to revive. About 130 years ago, Tehran had only five major mahaleh; now Tehran has been divided into 374 mahaleh.

In Mahaleh, the concept of neighborhood is so powerful. Mahaleh can be somehow a community, in which people are connected since they are living together. Ham-Mahaleh-ee, or the person who is living in the same mahaleh, is a powerful notion. Mahaleh could create a social identity, which may motivate people living in one mahaleh to help each other, to work for their own mahaleh. Mahaleh had a name; when somebody was asked where he/she had been born, you might hear he/she referred to the name of mahaleh. Now, reference to a mahaleh in responding to the place of birth has been forgot, since Tehran has really become a big city.

Facilitation and Trust

2009-07-19T05:26:00.000-07:00

Social trust plays a major role in cohesion in a group. When group members trust each other, they are somehow let the group act in harmony. Every member of a group acts like an essential part of a group and every member trusts others, this let the group move more smoothly.

When individuals who are members of a group - and that are in relationships characterized by high levels of social trust, then they are more apt to openly exchange information, since they know that by such exchanging the information, they will not be hurt.

I do not know whether there has been any research focused on social trust or not, but I know well that there is a direct relationship between social trust and the power of a group.

The role of a facilitator is to strengthen the social trust among members of a group, through designing the best trust-building activities, and using effective techniques based on social trust in group activities.

I will try to find more cases of social trust within groups in the next post.

Facilitation and various levels of interventions

2009-05-14T06:53:00.000-07:00

Three levels can be recognized in faciliation activity in community-based programs aimed at empowerment of people at local level: individual level (especially when there is a training activity or for example, when there is a referral activity); group level (empowerment activities aimed at CBOs or any other facilitation activity such as an evaluation); and community level (a change in values or culture of the group). But when you look at it from a distance, you can easily find three other levels (which will take you out of the community too, especially when you are trying to scale up): micro, meso and macro levels. Using this methodology, I would like to explain more how a faciliation activity affect the empowerment levels.

This is what I am going to work on it in this weblog, using my experience in facilitation in villages of Iran.