Page 169 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

The role of the facilitator The facilitator’s role begins with contributing to the design of the process. They should be an advisor on all the key design decisions including the number of days, number of participants and even the remit. This is because they will be directly involved with fulfilling each aspect of the process and because they have unique insight into the feasibility of each design decision. A bad outcome is when design decisions are made without facilitator involvement and they end up impractical, dysfunctional or at worst impossible to fulfil. The facilitator’s role is to come up with a process that flows step by step, with a set of activities that move people through getting information, understanding information, coming up with ideas, reviewing, prioritising and refining. All with an eye on how data is managed – both inputs to the process and the outputs from each step. This role requires an overall facilitation plan and detailed runsheets for each session or meeting. 167