Facilitation and Trust

Social trust plays a major role in cohesion in a group. When group members trust each other, they are somehow let the group act in harmony. Every member of a group acts like an essential part of a group and every member trusts others, this let the group move more smoothly.

When individuals who are members of a group - and that are in relationships characterized by high levels of social trust, then they are more apt to openly exchange information, since they know that by such exchanging the information, they will not be hurt.

I do not know whether there has been any research focused on social trust or not, but I know well that there is a direct relationship between social trust and the power of a group.

The role of a facilitator is to strengthen the social trust among members of a group, through designing the best trust-building activities, and using effective techniques based on social trust in group activities.

I will try to find more cases of social trust within groups in the next post.

Facilitation and various levels of interventions

Three levels can be recognized in faciliation activity in community-based programs aimed at empowerment of people at local level: individual level (especially when there is a training activity or for example, when there is a referral activity); group level (empowerment activities aimed at CBOs or any other facilitation activity such as an evaluation); and community level (a change in values or culture of the group). But when you look at it from a distance, you can easily find three other levels (which will take you out of the community too, especially when you are trying to scale up): micro, meso and macro levels. Using this methodology, I would like to explain more how a faciliation activity affect the empowerment levels.

This is what I am going to work on it in this weblog, using my experience in facilitation in villages of Iran.