Preparing for a Session
Read the following information, then complete the reflection activity below. Click NEXT to continue.
Your job as a facilitator is to provide a productive and safe environment for the participants in your group. Good preparation will set you up for success and help you guide the participants in your group through important, and sometimes difficult, conversations.
Faith for Rights is intended to help each participant navigate their own way through the relationship between human rights and religion. This means that it is not up to the facilitator to tell participants what they should think or how they should act. Instead, a facilitator should learn how to guide and assist participants through this personal journey. This can be achieved through planning and preparation.
This lesson will help you learn how to prepare yourself as a facilitator and guide your participants through each Faith4Rights module.
Make a Plan
Preparing to facilitate a discussion can help you make the most of every moment in your session. Preparation can help you estimate how long certain activities or discussion will take, plan for questions to stimulate conversation, and prepare you for any questions or concerns that may arise during a session. Preparation helps you and the participants. To prepare for a session, try to implement this simple, four step process.
- Read
- Read the contents of the module you plan to facilitate. Visit the links provided and view the resources in the Learning Library. Doing this will help you to collect all the tools available to help you lead a robust and meaningful Faith for Rights session.
- Identify Competencies
- Each Peer to Peer activity on the faith4rights.iclrs.org website lists competencies associated with that activiy. A competency identifies what participants will be able to do with the knowledge they gain as they participate in that activity. As a facilitator, identifying the competencies prior to engaging with the participants will help you plan the session in a way that highlights the goals of the session.
- Plan
- Take time to create a plan for the Faith for Rights session you will facilitate. The Faith for Rights Planning Guide, available for download in the next lesson, is a great tool to help you identify the important components of your Faith for Rights session. Strategically think of ways to engage the participants in meaningful discussions. Identify the different components of each peer to peer activity. What will happen at the beginning? In the middle? At the end? How much time should be allotted for each element of an activity? Write down questions that will help you facilitate discussion. Decide what materials may be needed for specific activities.
- Review
- After you have created a plan, it is important to review it. You can read it to yourself, practice it, or even go over it with a friend or colleague. This step will help you foresee any complications, challenges, or potential gaps in discussing the module with your participants.
Before the Session
You have planned your session and feel confident in the material. It is now time to consider any last minute details and prepare for your participants to arrive. Here are two basic tips before beginning your session:
- Make sure that any materials you may need for engaging the participants are ready. For some activities, this may mean a paper and pencil for each participant and others may require some way to view a video or view a picture as a group.
- Preparing the room can be very important to facilitating active discussion in groups. The following pictures are examples of different ways to set up a room. Experiment with different set-ups and find what works best for your group.
Prepare for your first session:
- Plan your session: select a Module and follow the four steps listed above in preparation for your session
- Prepare the room and make sure you have the appropriate materials for your session
- In your journal, record how preparation affected your attitude toward leading a session. How did it help you? Is there anything you want to change when preparing for your next session?