The Art of Observation in Community Empowerment

Imagine you are facilitating an empowerment process in a neighborhood or a rural community. As a facilitator, you need to equip yourself to guide a series of preparatory and collective activities. One essential reminder: pay attention to observation.

A facilitator must cultivate deep, holistic observation—and at the same time invite community members to observe with you, to practice seeing together. In other words, part of your role is to enable collective observation, or “seeing together.”

There are several important points I want to share. Of course, these are not the whole story. Observation as a skill for learning and understanding the environment is much broader than what I can cover here. It is not a side activity but a core part of empowerment: a tool that helps us notice signs, discover opportunities, and bring hidden capacities of the community to the surface. Each act of observation is a step toward deeper understanding and, potentially, more effective action.

1. Observation works with other senses—especially listening

Active listening is never just about the ears; it is about ears and eyes working together. In a community meeting, when people share their concerns, we don’t only listen—we also watch. How participants sit, whether they take notes, how they look at each other, who they whisper to, even their silences—all of these are signals.

This combination of listening and seeing helps us grasp not only the content of words but also facial expressions, body language, and collective reactions. As a result, the facilitator can better manage the atmosphere, recognize signs of trust or hesitation, and guide the conversation toward genuine participation. Observation alongside listening deepens communication and reveals hidden layers of social reality.

2. Observation beyond conversations

Observation is not limited to dialogue. During visits, walks through the village, games, or ongoing sessions, we must observe carefully—both the environment and participants’ responses.

To strengthen this skill, it is best to write down observations each time. Writing prevents details from being forgotten, reveals patterns, and turns scattered experiences into a coherent picture. (I often carry small notebooks to workshops so participants can practice observation and writing together.)

Recording observations strengthens the facilitator’s memory and enables collective reflection. Later, these notes can be revisited with community members, discussed, and transformed into new opportunities for empowerment. Writing is the bridge between seeing and acting.

3. Observation without bias

True observation means seeing reality as it is—without adding personal judgment or taking a stance. If a facilitator imposes their own interpretation while observing, they unintentionally steer the group toward their personal view, limiting free participation.

Neutral observation, on the other hand, allows for a more accurate understanding of the situation and gives the group space to decide based on their collective experience. Such observation is not about taking sides but about clarifying reality—a foundation for trust, constructive dialogue, and shared decisions.

4. Encourage observation constantly

This is part of my own practice: I keep saying, “Look, look.” A facilitator should continually invite the group to observe. Observation is not an optional extra; it is part of the ethics and method of facilitation.

I believe that neutral looking opens a window to fresh understanding. As one friend put it, every time we truly see, we discover something new. The more participants are encouraged to notice and pay attention, the greater the chance of building shared understanding and making informed decisions.

5. Observation for holistic understanding

Observation is not only about details; it must lead to a broader perspective. Whatever we see should be placed in a larger context.

For example, noticing a plant growing near a village is not just about the plant itself—it is part of the local ecosystem. Being served tomato stew in a rural home is not just about the tomato—it connects to daily life, agriculture, and culture.

This holistic lens pushes us to ask questions and seek connections between small elements and the larger whole, leading to deeper insight into reality.

6. Observation as shared interaction

I insist that part of interaction is “seeing together.” We must practice this: observe together, complete each other’s images, talk about what we see, and draw a collective mental map of observation.

Here, the facilitator plays a crucial role in enabling this process. Shared observation can spark creativity at any moment.

7. Practice observation continuously

We already observe all the time, but the challenge is to do it consciously. Write down the results. Try to identify opportunities while observing—and encourage others to do the same. Continuous practice makes observation a living skill.

Forget the Judgment. It's Time for Empowering Evaluation

Hey everyone,

I was in a workshop today (7 November 2025 in Sepidan, Fars Province, Iran) talking about the "generations of evaluation," and it got me fired up. We traced the path from simply counting things (1st gen), to describing them (2nd gen), to making top-down judgments (3rd gen).

Then we got to the game-changer: the shift toward collaborative, negotiated evaluation (the classic 4th gen). This is where we start handing the microphone to the community.

But I want to propose we take it a step further. The latest evolution isn't just about collaboration—it's about Empowering Evaluation.

This is the mindset we need for genuine, community-based facilitation.

What is Empowering Evaluation?

Let's be honest. The word "evaluation" can still make people tense. It hints at a report card, an external verdict, a pass/fail grade. Empowering Evaluation flips that script entirely.

It's not an audit; it's a process of co-creation and capacity building.

The goal isn't to produce a dusty report for a funder. The goal is to strengthen the community's own ability to understand, reflect, and direct its future. As a facilitator, my role isn't to be the judge, but to be a guide who helps the community build its own "learning muscles."

How is this Different?

- Old Way (Judgment): "Here's what you did well and poorly."

- Empowering Way: "What have we learned together? What power and knowledge do we now have to move forward?"

How to Practice Empowering Evaluation in Your Community Work

This isn't about complex metrics; it's about intentional practice.

1. Start with "Why Us?": From day one, frame the evaluation as for and by the community. Ask: "What do we need to learn to make this work more powerful for us?"

2. Co-design the Questions: Don't walk in with a pre-made survey. Facilitate a session where community members decide what success looks like and what questions are meaningful to ask. Their values drive the process.

3. Use Your Facilitation Tools for Reflection: Turn your regular meetings into reflective practice. Use simple tools like:

 - "What? So What? Now What?": What happened? What does it mean? What should we do based on that learning?

 - Appreciative Inquiry: Instead of focusing on problems, ask: "What's working best right now? How do we get more of that?"

 - Most Significant Change Stories: Collect and discuss stories of change, then have the group itself decide which stories were the most significant and why.

4. My Role as the Facilitator? A Mirror and a Bridge.

 - I am a mirror, reflecting back the patterns, strengths, and questions I hear from the group.

 - I am a bridge, connecting different perspectives within the community and linking their learning to actionable next steps.

The ultimate success of an Empowering Evaluation is when the community no longer needs me to facilitate the reflection—when asking "How are we doing?" and "What should we change?" becomes a natural, self-sustaining part of their culture.

That's the real goal: not a good evaluation report, but an empowered, self-aware, and adaptive community.

What are your thoughts? How have you seen evaluation empower—or disempower—a community you're part of?

Let's chat in the comments!

AI has helped me in arranging the text. 

Ethics in Facilitation: A Collective Reflection Across Borders

Recently, I hosted an online brainstorming session with facilitators from diverse backgrounds to explore the ethical principles that guide our work. The response was overwhelming—full of wisdom, experience, and heartfelt reflection. What follows is a synthesis of those contributions, enriched by a powerful set of insights from Iranian facilitators who added cultural nuance, lived experience, and philosophical depth to the conversation.

Universal Ethical Principles Shared by Facilitators

From the international brainstorming, several core ethical values emerged:

Respect for Participants: Every voice matters. Facilitators must create inclusive spaces where dignity is upheld.

Confidentiality and Trust: Safeguarding what’s shared builds the foundation for honest dialogue.

Neutrality and Impartiality: Facilitators guide the process, not the outcome.

Transparency and Honesty: Clear intentions and open communication are essential.

Responsibility and Accountability: Facilitators must own their decisions and their impact.

Empowerment and Equity: The goal is to uplift communities, not dominate them.

Cultural Sensitivity: Awareness of context and diversity strengthens facilitation.

Reflections from Iranian Facilitators: Ethics in Action

Iranian facilitators brought a deeply human and culturally grounded perspective to the discussion. Their insights added layers of meaning and practical wisdom to the ethical framework:

Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness

Patience and Tolerance: A facilitator must be a nonjudgmental listener with emotional resilience to manage disruptions calmly.

Self-Reflection and Self-Care: Ethics begins with the self. Facilitators must maintain their own mental and emotional health to serve effectively.

Avoiding Projection: Golshan Ghasemi reminded us that ethical lapses often stem from unresolved inner conflicts. Ethics requires introspection.

Human Dignity and Respect

Respecting All Voices: Honoring every participant’s experience and protecting their privacy is foundational.

Avoiding Top-Down Attitudes: Mitra Alborzi-Manesh emphasized that facilitators are not perfect beings—they must avoid imposing project goals and instead co-create them with communities.

Integrity and Accountability

Honesty and Transparency: Facilitators must be clear about their role, intentions, and limitations.

Avoiding Conflicts of Interest: Ethical facilitators must separate personal gain from community outcomes.

Responsibility for Impact: Maryam Lavi raised a critical question: Are facilitators responsible for long-term consequences of their interventions? Ethics demands foresight and humility.

Empowerment and Equity

Sustainable Facilitation: The goal is to build community capacity, not dependency.

Bottom-Up Approaches: True facilitation emerges from listening to lived experiences and redefining goals collaboratively.

Virtue and Character

Ethics as a Way of Being: Ethics is not just a set of rules—it’s a mindset rooted in values like honesty, kindness, and courage.

Universal Values: Traits like gratitude, humility, and respect are timeless and borderless.

Practical Wisdom

Listening Without Judgment: Active listening and empathy can defuse tension and build trust.

Updating Ethical Standards: Ethical frameworks must evolve with society’s changing values and contexts.

Structural Ethics

Defining Ethical Components: Ethics should be mapped to specific competencies in facilitation.

Respecting Cultural Contexts: Ethics must be adapted to the social and cultural nuances of each community.

Philosophical Foundations

Belief as a Moral Anchor: Mehdi Abedi argued that belief in the process itself generates ethical behavior.

Ethical Dilemmas and Outcomes: Should ethics prioritize process or results? This philosophical tension shapes real-world decisions.

Contextual Ethics: Sometimes, ethical action depends on the setting. Facilitating in unethical contexts may itself be unethical.

***

A Shared Vision

Across cultures and contexts, one truth stands out: facilitation is not merely a technical role—it’s a deeply ethical one. Whether in Tehran or Toronto, facilitators are called to be patient listeners, humble guides, and responsible stewards of collective processes.

This conversation is far from over. What other ethical dimensions do you think facilitators should embody? Let’s keep building this shared framework—together.

I am back after a long time

For the past ten years, my work in community-based empowerment across various contexts has been all-consuming, leaving me no time to write a single word here on my English blog. During this time, I actively maintained my Farsi blog, sharing various materials on community-based facilitation.

Last week, I decided it was time to bring this blog back to life. I'm excited to start sharing again in English!

2017 finishes, while our community activities continues

I would like to have a look at what I have done or better to say, what we have done (considering all members of the team of facilitators that are cooperating with me).

+ In poverty reduction, we are working on our patterns of NGO involvement as facilitators. In the three provinces of Semnan, Gilan and Kermanshah, we are still continuing; we have found out that the local entities are still active, and in this way, we are very happy that the activities have been sustainable.

+ In the project of the Multi-purpose Management of Caspian Hyrcanian Forests, we are still active as facilitators; in all four pilots, the local groups are becoming more empowered, and they are playing new roles. 2018 would be our last year of cooperation with this project. Therefore, our facilitators in all four pilot landscape are working on "exit" policies. In 2017, we have taken large steps forward, and this gives us a lot of hope to continue our efforts.

+ On issue of "regeneration" activities in urban communities, in 2016, we worked on the process. In 2017, we were mostly involved in coordination activities. I hope for 2018, we can directly work in communities. I have met some of the contracting parties and their facilitators attended a workshop that was run by me. I hope we can move forward in coming year.

We breathe with the Earth

Recently, I had an interview with Hamshahri, the major national Iranian Persian-language newspaper, on our community-based initiative. I tried to talk in a simple language since this was going to be read by general public. It was published on 25 February 2017. Zahra Taalaani, the journalist, interviewed me and prepared the text. I decided to translate the text into English. Here is the text.

We breathe with the earth

Every day, facts and figures on environmental degradation by human beings are published in the media, and officials or activists warn about the protection of environment or natural resources.

They believe that any environmental loss affects human beings more than others, because resources are limited and the life is endangered. Saeid Nouri Neshat, an environment activist, accompanied by a team, are working, more than three years, to empower local people in villages, not only to find a "way" or a "method" for conservation of their environment by them, but they can have a better livelihood. He calls this method 'facilitation'.

The increasing destruction of forests and pastures, excessive utilization of mines and natural resources, drought and the climate change, are happening due to the modern human lifestyle that has eroded the "earth" as our habitat. There are different ways to protect the environment but Saeid Nouri Neshat believes that empowering individuals, especially in rural areas, is the best solution for decreasing the destruction of forests and natural resources.

"I was involved in environmental activities, but then I understood that if people are causing damage to the environment, it is because of their economic pressures in their life", he says. "I found out when they have a better livelihood or a diversification of livelihoods, then the resources are better conserved." In other words, there is a direct relationship between the poverty reduction and environment conservation. Therefore, they started to focus on empowering people in the target areas. They helped them to understand their roots, to recognise their assets and to help each other to come out of the poverty.

He emphasized that the most important issue is to engage local communities and to promote group activities among villagers. It is, however, very difficult and has its special delicacy. There are certain helpful potentials in local culture and Islamic beliefs of rural people. The group sessions are usually held in mosques and hoseiniehs in villages; people are sensitized to the situation of their local communities and become ready to implement a series of activities in their own families or in their own village. In this way, they experience “participation”.

Saeid Nouri Neshat, or as the villagers call him “Uncle Saeid”, says about his special way of entrepreneurship: “it is not only entrepreneurship, it has to encompass other aspects of life. In other words, one cannot be active in economic issues; one cannot expect the situation remains sustainable; people have to think about other social problems that might even be the reasons for the unwanted economic status.” He continues that in one village, the produced chilies were first sold to the salesmen and the dealers – and the people could not earn enough money. But now, they are working on processing their chilies, using the guidance by the local group. In this way, they can earn more. They have held two chili festivals by now. At the present time, the facilitators have been working in eighteen communities in three provinces of Kermanshah, Semnan and Gilan. The provincial NGOs (Tanin Tabiat Tirgan in Shahroud; Hafezan Tabiat Payedar in Anzali, and Paraw in Kermanshah) and their facilitators are assisting in community work and livelihood activities.

Nouri Neshat explains about their methods of intervention and adds: “we try to be among people with a mind free from any imposed pattern or model; we help them to come together, and encourage them to talk about their existing livelihoods and interests. Our major concern is to maintain rural solidarity for achieving the goals set by themselves”. One idea is to establish revolving credit funds or local development funds. In many villages where they are active, such small funds have been formed out of rural savings and these funds are helpful for their economy.

Their colleagues have gained invaluable experience during the past years and this has facilitated their work. “Working at communities is time-consuming and one cannot expect to attain the results exactly at the time once designed in the project”. The experience has proved that the community work goes on slowly. The facilitators have to be patient and have to encourage local people to take the steps of empowerment gradually. Also, they have found out that the women are more inclined to participate in social activities. This is possibly because women have more free time, or they regard “participation” as an important issue or they enjoy participating and group activities more than others. Nouri Neshat says that they tried to form men’s groups too; only in one village, a group composed of men shaped, however, even in this group, the activities were more or less focused on producing handicrafts by rural women. In other villages, there are registered cooperatives with women and girls as their members.

Local knowledge reviewed in Nepal workshop

Today I attended a workshop on indigenous and local knowledge in Nepal held by IPBES - UNESCO. I am so happy since not only I learnt about the features of local knowledge, various papers were presented on cases of local knowledge in different Asian countries. My paper was about the local knowledge of Qanat in Iran, and I presented the results of the workshop on Qanat which was held in Kerman city by the Boompajuhan Society in September 2016. The report was prepared by me, Nina Aminzadeh and Mehdi Almasi.

The international Center on Qanats and Historic Hydraulic Structures gives a definition of 'Qanat’ as “an underground gallery that conveys water from an aquifer or a water source to less elevated fields. In practice, a Qanat consists of a series of vertical shafts in sloping ground, interconnected at the bottom by a tunnel with a gradient more gentle than that of the ground. The first shaft (mother well) is sunk, usually into an alluvial fan, to a level below the groundwater table. Shafts are sunk at intervals of 20 to 200 meters in a line between the groundwater recharge zone and the irrigated land. From the air, a Qanat system looks like a line of anthills leading from the foothills across the desert to the greenery of an irrigated settlement.” This is mostly a physical definition for Qanat, and to my point of view, it does not give an anthropological or cultural view of the Qanat system. It does not illustrate the intangible aspects of this ancient irrigation system. Especially when local management of a Qanat is studied, then certain social aspects of Qanat are revealed. The experiences of women in Takaab region in Kerman province - as explained by my colleague, Nina Aminzadeh, show how Qanat can act as an issue for solidarity.

I had also the chance to learn about the local knowledge on management of pastures of the Bakhtiari tribe in Zagros Area in Iran. She properly explained how the land reform has affected the whole system of nomadic management of natural resources during the past five decades and with settlement of part of their population in villages, the process of overgrazing has also increased.

There were other presentations from Pakistan, India, and Nepal.