Facilitation

PLEASE NOTE THIS DOCUMENT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS AND NEEDS ADDITIONAL MEMBERS TO CONTRIBUTE!

Facilitation Process

Facilitation of meetings is focussed on the process of the meeting. This process is both for plenary sessions and working groups. Depending on who is preparing a session, a working group or the facilitation group itself, these are the proposed responsibilities:

Before a meeting

• Create an agenda, ideally to be shared before the start of a meeting to create time for thought through feedback from others

• Proposed time schedule

• Collect proposals on which people are to take decisions

• If applicable, share action points from the previous session

During a meeting

• Creating space for all voices to be heard (including sometimes implementing step up, step down principles when people are not doing it themselves)

• Keeping conversation on topic

• Recap opinions when necessary to focus conversation

• Keep time

• Vibe watching

• Stack taking (keep track of who wants to speak)

• Harvesting the discussion

• Clear minutes, including an action list (meaning, dividing the brought up tasks immediately)

• Facilitate decision making processes

• Recap full conversation at the end of a meeting

• If necessary: plan date and location next session and appoint host

Roles: Host, Guardian of intent, Guardian of Process, Harvester, Minute taker

After a meeting

• Sending around the minutes, including analysis of the harvests

• Archiving the minutes

• Archiving documentation and analysis of harvests

Tasks for after this specific assembly

• Create and share manual for facilitation for working groups to refer back to in their own working processes

• Create and share manual for decision making process

• Create collective agenda, to have overview about when working groups are meeting

• Create and share list of working groups, participating members and contacts overview

• Facilitation participants are advised to arrive earlier to the host country to help in the preparations on-site.

All facilitation groups should rotate

*A Facilitation Guideline will be prepared and provided by the Assembly Working Group during the planning process for the next Assembly. The Guideline will be shared in advance of Assembly.

Banga Meeting Guidelines

Banga Working Group: Aline (Al-ma’mal), Barto (Ruangrupa), Lauren (VANSA), Reem (DARB 1718), Teesa (32° East) Tony (Casa Tres Patios)

What’s a Banga meeting?

This is proposed to be a Nomadic (or Know-madic) meeting that has its main purpose in care for a certain organisation at a certain moment in time, and knowledge sharing specific to the support of the organization and/or its programme(s). In other words, the Banga is a constructive tool that is both helpful to the organization and the ecosystem. It is where we practice collective study, care and skills sharing.

The Banga meeting results in tooling that is useful to the AC network as well as the group requesting the Banga and their ecosystem.

A Banga Meeting could cover:

• Caregiving: advising on a certain issue or project, strengthening and supporting a certain programme, discussing a crisis/emergency

• Collective study

• Skills sharing in a specific programme or project

A week-long Banga is a good amount of time for intense study and deep-diving. It also potentially puts less pressure on the host when it comes to organization. However, depending on the scale of the need and if the visiting group is small, then more time may be preferred.

Things to consider when organizing a Banga

The following is a list of points to consider, with accompanying questions, that are intended to help the organizing group in the conceptualization and planning of their Banga meeting. In the spirit of tooling and sharing knowledge that is intended to help the AC ecosystem, it is suggested that the answers to these questions be written down in order for the current and future AC partners to understand the questions, issues and processes that led to the Banga meeting, the planning processes that were involved, the activities planned and the tools that were generated. Considerations for a Banga should be made in line with our Ethical Principles—including the value of self-limitation and non-hierarchical self-organization.

The Need

- Why is the Banga important and necessary at this point in the evolution of your group? Your

Lifeline Plan should serve as a reference for establishing the need for the Banga, and your

Lifeline Triangle should help with this thinking process.

- Is a Banga the right tool to meet this need? Have other means been considered? Are there

alternative ways to share knowledge and care-giving than face-to-face?

The Participants

- Which AC members are you inviting?

- Will there be external participants?

- What expected added value are they bringing to the meeting?

- If you do not have a particular person/group in mind to match your need,

look through the AC Resource Map and talk it through with your lifeline triangle.

The Timeline

- Have you communicated to the AC network, through the Tam Tam, about your plan for a Banga?

(Who is coming? When is it happening? Why is it happening?)

- Have you given potential Banga participants enough notice for planning?

- Have you got enough time to work out visa arrangements and other logistics?

(Banga in Lubumbashi took 3 months to plan)

- Will there be a pre-study for the Banga?

The Methodology

- What forms are you going to use to introduce the group to your environment and to the specific

issue/project you’re gathering for?

- What material will you share with the group before the Banga?

- What will the tooling techniques consist of? (based on the Tooling Guidelines)

The Budget

- How will the Banga be funded? (see Administrative Guidelines)

• Funds generally come from the collective pot so self-limitation with spending ;)

- Will non-collective pot funds be used? Where will the funds come from? Share for tooling sake!

Post Banga

Share your experience in the next Tam Tam (See Tam Tam guidelines)

Share your tooling (See Tooling guidelines)

This section below is from the Future Plan and speaks to the principles behind a Banga. It served as an important reference for the preparation of these guidelines.

Practical Framework

● Before calling a Banga meeting, AC members should first look at the AC Resource Map to see if the desired support can otherwise be found;

● Partners should also first make a ‘self-diagnosis’ through Study Buddying (interview chains, Skype discussions with AC partners) in order to check if a Banga would be resourceful;

● Banga meetings can also be proposed at the Assembly in order to get collective feedback. During the assembly, a Banga team/committee will be formed, consisting of three AC organizations, in order to decide on which Banga calls to support, based on practical considerations. Decisions will be made in line with our Ethical Principles—including the value of self-limitation and non-hierarchical self-organization. The team will look at whether the meeting should take place with the other AC members and/or whether there is a translocal benefit as it could be held with other local organizations or practitioners. AC will also investigate if the Banga meeting could be of benefit to AC in light of its resource map;

● The organization of a Banga is to be carried out by the host organization, including the travel arrangements;

● Each Banga has a budget of a maximum 8,000 Euro. In case a bigger budget is needed the remainder will need to come from the host or the Collective Pot. (This should be deleted if the text below is correct.)

• Each Banga budget is a maximum of 8,000 Euros, which will be used to cover all of the costs of the Banga meeting. These funds come from the Collective Pot of the host organization, or the organization that is calling for the Banga. If the costs of the Banga exceed the 8,000 Euros the host organization will have the choice of either paying the difference from its own funds (not the collective pot funds) or requesting permission from Attaya to use funds from the Collective Savings. (This needs to be verified.)