Facilitating Change
What is the Service?
The service offers facilitation in the process of progressive change within organisations and between individuals, groups and sectors.
Progressive change can be accelerated if led by facilitators who combine an appropriate knowledge base, relational skills and the capacity to challenge individuals and groups to take risks in the creative process. This involves the dynamic balance between individual and organisational change.
Types of 'facilitating change' on offer include: strategic planning, regional and county-wide planning, and management of change within organisations.
Who is it for?
State and Voluntary Boards, NGO's, State-sponsored agencies, Local Authorities, national and local community development organisations, university governing bodies, departments and centres, family resource and counselling centres, human rights and equality bodies.
A Recent Project – Chairing ‘Town Hall Talks’
Over the past year there has been a lot of public debate about the need for political reform in Ireland, much of which laments the lack of genuine engagement by citizens and communities in reshaping Ireland. In order to facilitate change towards empowering engagement, the Centre for Progressive Change has partnered with South Dublin County Council (a local authority) and An Cosan (a community organisation) to host a series of ‘Town Hall Talks’ on public policy issues that have direct bearing on the lives of citizens and residents. We have held two events: ‘NAMA and its implications for ordinary citizens and taxpayers’ with Professor John FitzGerald (ESRI) and Professor Brian Lucey (TCD); and ‘Community Development in a time of Recession’ with Mr Gerry Kearney (Secretary General of Department of Rural, Community and Gaeltacht Affairs) and Dr Mary Murphy (Sociologist, Maynooth). We chaired both events and used a dialogical model of engagement between speakers and citizens, in order to facilitate learning about complex public issues. We believe that it is educated citizens who are in the strongest position to engage with elected political representatives, in a way that contributes to healthy governance and accountability.
Dr Ann Louise Gilligan facilitates three programmes which form an in-depth discussion on the current state of Community Education in Dublin. This is part of the “Beyond the Classroom Project” produced by DCTV in partnership with the AONTAS Community Education Network and funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland Sound and Vision Fund.
A recording of the first of these three programmes is online at: http://vimeo.com/10052319
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