Author Archives: orlaadmin
Mar
Learn to facilitate fantastic virtual meetings and workshops
The revolution in remote working and virtual meetings has taken hold, but our skills haven’t necessarily kept up.
Learn to run excellent virtual meetings and workshops. ICA USA and ICA UK have been in existence for over 50 years, teaching people how to maximise engagement and participation in the voluntary and NGO sector.
Now our skills have been applied to remote facilitation.
Over 8 weeks (approximately 1.5 hours a week plus ‘homeplay’), you will:
- Gain competency leading virtual meetings with Adobe Connect, and ToP Focused Conversation.
- Build your confidence as a virtual facilitator.
- Learn tools and techniques for eliciting participation, virtual meeting design, and best practices for smooth and engaging facilitation.
No special skills or equipment needed apart from a computer with an internet connection, and a headset.
Sign up here for the next course, which starts on 5th April 2016 at 4pm BST or contact Orla Cronin for further information
Tagged | facilitation, participation, participatory, technology, training
Feb
One of my intentions this year is to pay much greater attention to “connection”. Part of that is taking part in conversations happening both in my areas of expertise, and in the broader world of international development, civil society.
What better way to both connect *and* procrastinate than to generate a “listicle” of my 10 favourite blogs?
These are not necessarily the only or the best blogs I follow, but they provide just the right balance for me of breadth, depth, interest and technical know how.
A classic: insightful, varied, conversational and occasionally funny. Written by Duncan Green (strategic advisor for Oxfam GB)
A blogging community with guest bloggers and cross postings. A rich source of ideas and resources
Ben Ramalingam’s blog which accompanies his book. A critical perspective on NGOs and international development in general.
Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex blog
Combines existing blogs on Impact and Learning, Knowledge Mobilisation and Impact, Participation and others into one gobal IDS blog.
Frameworker Bruce Britton’s blog on learning in NGOs
And blogs relating to my particular or current interests….
African Universities Research Approaches blog
I am currently consulting on this project, and use this blog to get a bird’s eye view of the whole programme
Chris Lysy’s glorious and astute cartoon blog on evaluation and visual data
Monitoring and Evaluation News
A rich resource edited by Rick Davies focusing on developments in monitoring and evaluation methods relevant to development programmes with social development objectives
Not quite a blog, and a work in progress, but a growing repository of expertise and tools on facilitating virtual groups and communities. Maintained by Nancy White who also blogs here.
The team at Barefoot are starting to convene the informal community which exists around Barefoot guides, starting with their blog.
And a ‘spare’: for pleasure and general ‘saw sharpening’….
Written and curated by Maria Popova, this blog regularly receives accolades in the blogosphere. According to Maria, it involves over 450 hours of work each month, and it shows.
As she describes it, Brain Pickings is “your LEGO treasure chest, full of pieces across art, design, science, technology, philosophy, history, politics, psychology, sociology, ecology, anthropology, you-name-itology”
Perfect with Sunday morning coffee! Oh, and apparently she writes standing on a wobble board. I wonder if there’s might be a causal effect between standing on a wobble board and producing a wonderful blog? I may need to do some shopping…..
Feb
New tools and resources available via Framework
To celebrate Framework’s 30th birthday, we have trawled through our filing cabinets and uploaded some of our favourite tools and reports to the the resources page. Come and see us at Stand 12 at the Bond Conference on 29/2-1/3/2016 to discuss them with us (Orla will be there with her Framework hat on on Tuesday)
Feel free to use these resources, including sharing them and modifying for non-commercial purposes. A credit would be appreciated!
Tools for working in organisations which we’ve recently uploaded include:
Capacity building methods overview
Capacity building programme matrix
Monitoring & evaluating capacity building: A practical tool
Impact grid exercises to explore organisational change
Tagged | capacity building, evaluation, participation
Aug
Review of 2014-2015 in Framework
Bruce Britton, one of my Framework colleagues, put together this delightful animated timeline of our work as a collective covering January 2014-June 2015.
It is best viewed in full screen mode. The music is the 3rd Movement of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint played by Catrin Finch