Process Facilitation

Facilitation is one of the most underappreciated skills in the business and non-profit worlds. The facilitation of decision processes is often the key difference between wasting people’s time, eroding their confidence, and forging consensus and moving ahead to implementation. Starting in graduate school, I began to learn the craft of facilitation.

I've since come to understand that participatory process is about sharing power. A prisoner is involved in their own incarceration but does not participate in the sense of sharing power. Tokenism is too often confused with participation.

Central American Protected Area System

I was the principal facilitator for the creation of the Central American Regional Protected Areas Program (PERTAP). Funded through UNDP and under the auspices of the Protected Area Technical Committee of the Central American Commission on Environment and Development, I worked in 2004 with protected area directors from the seven Central American countries to design a regional program that integrates the national park systems to achieve economies of scale that benefit in situ conservation throughout the region. See the press release and the final document (5 MB PDF).

RARE Center

During my nearly 7 years with Rare (as it is now known), I co-facilitated many planning workshops in Central America, including vision workshops and specific products, mostly in Spanish.

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Program Developer for World Heritage Sites

Public Use Planning Program

I designed a program and trained public use coordinators in Latin America and Indonesia in the facilitation of strategic public use planning in parks. I wrote the training manual for the Public Use Planning Program, RARE Center. See more on the conservation page.

Pico Bonito National Park, Honduras

I facilitated the creation of the Public Use Plan for Pico Bonito National Park in Honduras. One significant element was the facilitation of the Eco-Alliance between the park and the Lodge at Pico Bonito. This voluntary agreement that took 8 months of negotiation resulted in a wide variety of agreements, the most significant of which was a commitment by the Lodge to donate $5 to the park for each and every visitor it receives. The signing of the agreement took place in the Lodge in front of RARE Center’s board of directors.

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Team Leader for Participatory Rural Appraisal in Ecuador

Pululahua Geobotanical Reserve Recruited a 4-person team for my master’s thesis project, “Participatory Rural Appraisal in an Andean Farming Community,” Ecuador. Applied skills from training programs to actual rural appraisal in the field. Learn more on the recreation page.

Tikal National Park I recruited and led a rapid rural appraisal team (“data collection”) for a week around Tikal National Park as part of the RARE Center’s World Heritage Partnership site assessment process. July, 2001. Learn more on the recreation page.

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My Training in Facilitation

I a ttended a training workshop in Rapid Rural Appraisal and Participatory Rural Appraisal by Karen Schoonmaker Freudenberger, Yale University 1997.
I a ttended a traing workshop for Sondeo Rural Participativo offered by the International Institute for Rural Reconstrution in Quito, Ecuador, 1996.
I am certified in “Group Facilitation Methods”of the Technology of Participation, (ToP) sponsored by the Institute for Cultural Affairs.
I developed a variety of tools for facilitating the public use planning process and taught them to public use coordinators at World Heritage Sites.

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