Page 184 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

182 A Project of the UN Democracy Fund (UNDEF) a. Government speakers At the beginning of a process, it is important for the government or sponsoring agency to share the problem and key background information in a short presentation (guideline: 30-40min speaking and a similar time for questions). This is best done by managers who are hands-on with the problem who can share their experience. b. Government nominated speakers Additionally, the government may want to nominate speakers that they think the participants should hear from. These should provide a diversity of views on the topic and not be a panel of speakers all supporting to government’s position on any given issue. This means that you may need to be involved in curating the selection to ensure a diversity of views is present. For transparency, facilitators should always make clear why a speaker is there i.e. who selected them and what their background is. c. Stakeholder/interest group nominated speakers One way of harnessing stakeholder input into the process is to give them the task of choosing a diversity of speakers to present to the group. The emphasis here is on the balance of views and that stakeholders agree to the whole panel. The motivating question here is “Who should they hear from in order to make an informed recommendation?” d. Jury/panel member nominated speakers After hearing from organisation and stakeholder nominated speakers, the group now has the chance to choose speakers to fill information gaps they have identified themselves. You should ask them: What information is missing? And, who do you trust to give you this information? One way of ensuring there is a diversity of views presented to the group is to nominate speakers in pairs that have differing views on an issue or contested piece of information.