Building Power Through Better Facilitation
Are you interested in building your own civic literacy or advocacy skills?
Reach out to monique@womentransformingcities.org to chat more about our workshop and facilitation offerings!
At WTC, we know that how we facilitate matters. The spaces we create for equity-deserving communities must be intentional, empowering, and designed to amplify the voices of those most affected by systemic barriers. That's why our team spent two transformative days with facilitator Suzanne Hawkes, deepening our skills and strengthening our collective approach to community engagement.
Creating Containers for Change
We loved diving into the foundation of powerful facilitation: creating strong containers where equity-deserving residents can bring their full selves and expertise into the room. Through hands-on practice, we refined techniques for opening workshops with purpose—using storytelling to model vulnerability, getting folks talking and moving right away, and establishing group agreements that centre community care.
The training reinforced what we already know to be true: people are experts in their own lives. Our role as facilitators is to design processes that honour this expertise while building collective power for systemic change.
From Theory to Practice
We brainstormed what interactive techniques have worked for us in the past, and what fun new ideas we can bring into our next iteration of workshops and events. Some of our takeaways include fish bowl dialogues, quick introductory activities, and even mapping out a participatory budget process using chocolate coins.
The training deepened our understanding of workshop design as a learning continuum. Whether we're informing residents about municipal processes, consulting on policy priorities, or co-creating advocacy strategies, each method has its place in building civic literacy and community power.
We loved refining our timing techniques—knowing when to shift modalities, how long to spend on pair shares, and when communities need breaks to process and integrate so that all of our participants can engage fully.
Moving Forward Together
As we implement these enhanced facilitation skills in our community workshops, Watch Council sessions, and Hot Pink Paper campaign events, we're reminded that our work is fundamentally about shifting power. Every facilitation choice we make can help create pathways to reshape who cities have been built by and for.
We're building story banks for our workshops, creating agreement templates that centre intersectional feminism, and preparing to experiment with new activities that deepen community connection and collective action.
The colonial structures of local government weren't designed to include women, girls, Two Spirit, trans, non-binary people, and all equity-deserving communities. But through skilled facilitation that honours community expertise and builds collective power, we're transforming these spaces from the ground up.
