Embracing Community through dialogue and unleashing the synergy of change

Embracing Community through dialogue
and unleashing the synergy of change
A multi-stakeholder dialogic change process workshop
November 4-6, 2011, 9am-5pm

■How can an organization enroll its employees, vendors and customers to participation in a collective innovation process?
■How can government agents use multi-stakeholder dialogue to generate comprehensive policies and resolutions?
■When implementing corporate social responsibility, how can an organization understand real societal needs and provide appropriate service for social change?
■How can a multi-stakeholder-focused civil society organizations reach consensus and bring new possibilities to their issues of concern?

Guest Facilitator:
Philip Thomas is a social change facilitator who over the past 20 years has worked on social change in Latin America, specializing in dialogue facilitation in cross-departmental, interethnic and cross border public interest issues; solving problems, building consensus, creating actions, and promoting social, organizational and community desire for change.  This process often includes the government, private sector, and civil society groups in multi-stakeholder discussions on complex issues.

In 2007, he and Dr. Bettye Pruitt wrote Democratic Dialogues - A Handbook for Practitioners.  This Handbook was a joint effort of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Organization of American States (OAS),  Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), International IDEA, and received valuable input from a wider network of organizations.  Philip and Bettye are co-founders of the Generative Change Community (a Society for Organizational Learning member), a community comprised of advanced practitioners of peace building, negotiation, mediation, participatory action research, and multi-stakeholder dialogue in various fields of endeavor, such as global network building, inter-sectoral collaboration, conflict prevention, and democracy building. 

His specialty is: public dialogue process design, breakthrough analysis and shift, multiparty negotiation, facilitation and mediation, participatory decision making systems and consensus-building processes, organizational development and institutional strengthening, Strategic planning processes, Program evaluation processes, Systems thinking, design and delivery of adult education programs, training for trainers, and more!

Program Description:
In the past couple of decades, there has been a significant movement to embrace the idea of multi‐ stakeholder processes as a strategy for dealing with societal challenges, especially at the community level. The kinds of problems communities now face often require constructive and creative strategies for engaging across different actors and interests, often across profound divides – ethnic, cultural and/or religious identities, as well as differences in wealth, education, and opportunity.

The aim of this course is to offer a capacity‐development opportunity to individuals in any sector (government, business, non‐ profit) who wish to provide strong and effective leadership in the design and implementation of processes that engage actors within and across different groups in society.

This course uses a participatory methodology that will draw heavily on participant experience and knowledge and will offer ample time for personal reflection and interaction with fellow participants. It will also present useful frameworks and tools that will help ensure an appropriate fit between strategy, methodology and context in the design of stakeholder engagement processes.

Course Contents:
Module 1: How can stakeholder engagement contribute to addressing the challenges communities face?
Module 2: What assumptions do we hold that shape how we frame the goals and strategies of a stakeholder engagement process?
Module 3: Understanding Process Design
Module 4: What are the key issues a design should define?
Module 5: The Dialogue Journey: An overview of different stages in the unfolding of a process

Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course, participants will have:
■Increased awareness of the particular demands placed on leaders of dialogic change processes and practice in developing the skills needed to meet those demands
■Practical experience with a number of key “thinking tools” to facilitate rigorous and generative group thinking about purpose and strategy in stakeholder engagement processes
■Strong conceptual understanding of what it means to think in terms of “process and process design” ‐‐ a focus on the “how” of stakeholder engagement, which is quite distinct from focusing exclusively on the content
■Working knowledge of different kinds of process methodologies and strategies that will increase their ability to be more creative and effective in processes designed to engage within and across sectors at different levels in society – bottom‐up, top‐down, middle‐out of the challenge or crisis an engagement process must address
■Increased knowledge of the difficulties and dilemmas that often emerge in different phases in the implementation of a process as well as concrete strategies for dealing with them along the way.

Target Audience:
Individuals involved in the work of public affairs, corporate social responsibility, community development, organizational and social change, and facilitation.
Sponsor: CP Yen Foundation (朝邦文教基金會)
Facilitator: Philip Thomas
Teaching method: explanation, small group discussion, group and individual exercises and case study.
Course date: November 4~6, 2011 (three days)
Day 1 & 2: conceptual frameworks, Day 3 practical application and practice
Participants can join all three days or the first two days only.
Language: taught in English with consecutive translation to Mandarin Chinese
Location: Tianmu Convention Center, Room 101 (天母國際會議中心  101教室)
113 Chung Shan North Road Section 7, Shihlin District, Taipei (台北市士林區中山北路7段113號)

Registration:
● Online:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/workshop201111
● Maximum Capacity：40
● Fee:
Early Bird Registration: submit registration and payment before October 25, 5:00pm
fee: Three days N$T8,000, two days $7,000
Nonprofit organizations (including public offices) fee: Three days NT4,800, two days 4,000 (limited to full-time employees)
Registration after October 25, 2011
Fee: Three days NT$ 10,000, two days $9,000
NPO: Three days NT$ 6,000, two days $5,000
Registration fee includes lunch and snacks.
Group ticket from same organization: more than 3 people, each ticket receives a coupon of NT$500
● Bank Transfer to the account of: 朝邦文教基金會 合作金庫006 台北分行 0540-717-152039
● Contact：陳麗美  02-2771-0164 EXT. 26