Testimonials from Workshop Graduates

“This is the BEST professional development workshop that I have ever been to and would highly recommend it to everyone. It changes the way you approach all of life, not just facilitation times.”

Testimonials from Communities Where a Participatory Approach Was Used

Local pastors were not using videos and books which had been produced in their own language. They had attended two meetings in which they were encouraged to  use them. They smiled and nodded and left empty-handed. When a participatory discussion was facilitated in which they described the language situation among the 1 million speakers of their language, analyzed why they were using the national language, and asked God to show them what He desired to do through their language, the pastors were suddenly saying, “We need more Christian songs in our language “, “We cannot stop with the New Testament, we need Genesis and Psalms”, “We will host the next meeting at our congregation.”

“We thought it would be a boring meeting," participants said. "You should have told us this was going to be fun. Many more people would have participated!”

A country-wide partnership found that their meetings took less time when using a participatory approach, even with people from many organizations and ethnic backgrounds. Instead of talking about each idea as it was mentioned, they first brainstormed, then prioritized, then spent time working on the highest priority items.

A committee was planning a major area-wide event, but was struggling to make progress. The facilitator wrote heading papers for Where? When? Who? How Much? etc. Next, the participants wrote specific ideas on smaller papers under each one. The dynamics changed. Ideas flowed! No one watched the clock, but rather they focused well and left the meeting with action items and questions to take back to other members of their own organizations. The event held two months later was a success.

A participant who expected outsiders or experts to make decisions exclaimed: “We didn’t realize how much we knew!”

Testimonials from an International Conference

(This conference had 500+ participants, and many of the meetings were facilitated using participatory methods)

• • "I felt that I had a voice."

  • "It was a spiritual experience."

  • "I saw the reams of paper and I thought that they could not be synthesized, but the synthesis team did it. No, the Holy Spirit did it!"

  • "I only had negative expectations going in: that the decisions would all have been made already and we were expected to approve them, and that we would talk but not actually make progress. Neither of those expectations was met."