In 2023, we started offering a new workshop called “Facilitating Collective Power” and have been surprised by the diversity of participants and how they work with communities, groups and networks to build power—those building collective power with those who don’t have it but should especially inspire us.
Join us for Facilitating Collective Power on December 7th
Why focus on collective power
When we say”“collective power”, we refer to ways individuals attain goals or outcomes through combined efforts. There are several reasons why collective power is effective: strength in numbers, inclusion of diverse perspectives, providing mutual support and building community. Collective power is most effective for individuals to unite and impact societal structures. By working together, we can achieve more and benefit more than alone. Collective power means shared ownership of outcomes, lessening the likelihood of failure and benefit for many rather than the few. Most systems we currently work within prefer the individual over the collective.
Why focus on facilitation
Facilitation is an essential skill for anyone who sees themselves building collective power. This playbook will help you do that by providing exercises you can do with groups, backgrounds, methodologies and theory to convene effectively. You might be working to attain and maintain rights for a more just and equitable society. You might be building a network of practice so practitioners might learn from each other and not have to reinvent the wheel. Or you might be looking to create transparent, accountable, just and fair processes. You might be facilitating a workshop, meeting, event or a process, and you’ll need the ability to empower a group to work together.
Our Approach
We are starting with content from The FabToolkit, where we’ve been publishing curriculum developed through our facilitation work with charities and non-profits for the last decade. We are reimagining this content as part of a Network-Centric Resource, The Collective Power Playbook. There are two significant resources that we will be drawing on to guide us in this process:
- The Lifecycle of a Network-Centric Resource was developed with invaluable contributions from a diverse range of resource developers.
- How to Create a (Data) Playbook – `the methodology that Heather Leson, Melissa El Hamouch and I used to co-create a data literacy resource for and with the Red Cross/Red Crescent humanitarian network.
We call this a playbook because it is meant to be used by teams and groups working and learning together and from each other. It is for social learning rather than individual learning. There will be guidance for individuals on how to facilitate, engage and serve the needs of the collective.
We’ve begun talking to colleagues about how a Collective Power Playbook might be helpful to them and their work. We are asking people to review taxonomies and a draft Table of Contents to find out what might be missing, what might be contributed and how they might want to get involved.
We also imagine that The Collective Power Playbook will always be a work in progress. We want to use the development of the playbook to convene, learn and engage others in contributing.
Along with the existing social learning exercises we have in the FabToolkit, we will also be collecting other and developing new resources that can support individuals in learning how to work with/facilitate groups in ways that empower them.
We’re currently exploring appropriate platforms for editing and publishing content. Ultimately, it will live at collectivepower.net
How to get involved:
- Send an email to getinvolved@collectivepower.net to get access to our draft table of contents and taxonomy, and we will then set up a time with you to discuss the playbook and how you might contribute.
- Join the play@collectivepower.net discussion list to learn about its progress and how people use the content.