Advocates of sustainable and inclusive landscape governance (SILG) use multi-stakeholder dialogues as a tool for understanding the issues people face in a particular landscape, and collaborative decision-making. We worked with Forest Foundation Philippines to design a toolkit that would support both novice and experienced facilitators in designing and facilitating relevant, inclusive, creative, and humane dialogues for both face-to-face and online settings. We created two kinds of toolkits: a printable booklet in both English and Filipino, and an interactive microsite that facilitators could update in real-time to share tips with a larger community of dialogue facilitators.
Task
How might we support civil society organizations in designing and facilitating meaningful landscape dialogues?
Design
A facilitator’s toolkit in English and Filipino. The toolkit took the form of a printable booklet and an interactive microsite on Google Sites.
Guided by the principle of “kasya lahat” and the processes of co-design, we worked closely with Forest Foundation Philippines (FFP) to better understand the desired outcomes of a landscape dialogue and what a well-designed toolkit might look like for its users. They linked us with representatives from Civil Service Organizations (CSOs) who could ground the toolkit in their lived experience as both dialogue facilitators and participants in landscape dialogues.From these conversations, we learned about their prior knowledge, motivators, and the typical challenges they face in dialogues. This helped us understand what experienced facilitators would appreciate reading from a toolkit and how the information in the toolkit might be organized. They also generously shared their own practices which we then included in the toolkit as tips and quotes to encourage the user. In this way, different stakeholders were part of creating a toolkit.
About the Toolkit
Using insights from our interviews, we built on the initial content written by FFP and created a toolkit organized into three main sections: People, Spaces, and Processes. “People” focused on empathizing with different actors and stakeholders in the dialogue process, “Spaces” talked about practices in navigating physical, digital, and cultural environments where these dialogues take place, and “Processes” contained techniques in putting together dialogues that deal with ways of working across these sectors and environments.The toolkit also included recipe-style activities that facilitators could use to achieve particular outcomes in a dialogue such as setting norms, managing tensions and conflicts, and brainstorming possible solutions.The toolkit took three forms: a printable booklet, an online PDF that could be downloaded into mobile devices and taken into the field, and an interactive microsite that could be updated in real time with stories and contributions from other landscape dialogue facilitators.
Humanizing the Toolkit Experience
Toolkits are typically consumed asynchronously and can feel isolating. We wanted to ensure that the toolkit would help facilitators feel part of a larger community of landscape dialogue facilitators. We did this by including quotes and stories from dialogue facilitators to ground the information in real experiences. In addition to new activities from our own facilitation toolkit, we incorporated tried-and-tested activities recommended by the partner to affirm the good practices that facilitators may already be doing. We also wrote the toolkit in a conversational tone, using simple, straightforward language and avoiding technical jargon whenever possible. Blank pages and reflection questions were included so that the user would be able to take notes and update the toolkit with their own experiences. We replicated this feature in the microsite version of the toolkit by embedding digital bulletin boards, turning the microsite into a living resource that could be updated as facilitators learn more about their practice. The toolkit is a marriage of FFP and their partners’ technical expertise and experience facilitating landscape dialogues, and our own experience designing and facilitating safe and highly engaging learning experiences.
