Facilitators-Handbook-For-Permaculture

44 Facilitator’s Handbook for Permaculture Workshops

Creative facilitation: Forming work groups

If the course lesson plan includes group work and brainstorms, at this point you

can facilitate a process for grouping participants into dynamic working groups. For

alternative more creative ways to form groups, see the following section “Creative Group

Techniques”.

Try to ensure there are equal numbers of men and women in each group. In areas where

this is culturally inappropriate, or would prohibit women’s abilities to speak up, separate

women’s and men’s groups can be formed.

If you have a mixed level of expertise represented in the group, encourage a good

distribution throughout each group of those people that may have special knowledge

which would help other workgroup members in brainstorming or working processes.

Explain to the groups that throughout the course, whenever they work together on a

project or exercise, they can nominate a spokesperson to present their group’s findings

to the class.

If it is appropriate for your lesson plan, you can take this opportunity to give each group

a large pad of paper and a set of color markers they can use as a “group brainstorm

journal” to draw and write on freely whenever they work together.

This is also a good time to talk about basic guidelines for group etiquette and

creative cooperation, for example:

• Practice the principles of cooperation not competition.


• Give each person in the group an equal chance and time to speak.


• Listen – so that you can understand what each person in your group has to say.


• Contribute your own thoughts to the group when your turn comes.


• Connect group member’s different ideas together.


• Notice what unexpected insights emerge from combining the ideas of the group.

Forming work groups - Creative method 1: Secret color

1. Work out how many groups you want to form and divide the number of
   participants into this amount.


2. Create small colored cards - as many colors as work groups needed for the
   exercise. For example, if you have 30 participants and need 5 groups, make 6
   cards for each of these colors: Green, Red, Blue, Yellow, Purple.


3. Place the colored cards in a bag, basket, or box.


4. Ask each participant to take one color card and join the others with the same color.

Variation on this method: Instead of colored cards, you can also use sticks from

different types of trees, stems of plants, small colored stones, small pieces of bamboo

with markings, etc.