Facilitating stakeholder collaboration for Inclusive and Sustainable Food Systems

This course will be taught in blended format. Which means, partially online and partially in an Kenya, not The Netherlands. Location may be updated.

For self-funded applicants:

For mid-career professionals working and living in Latin America:

You may be confronted directly or indirectly with the many complex challenges of today: the over-use of natural resources, climate change, continuing poverty and inequality. These call for innovative solutions and new engagements between business, government, knowledge institutes, civil society and individual actors.

You have probably experienced that good collaboration doesn't just happen. It needs to be well designed, co-created and facilitated. Navigating the different interests that stakeholders bring to the table means dealing with uncertainties, differences in power, complexity and potential conflicts. This requires specific facilitation skills and attitudes, such as capacities to:

• build trust and a shared vision for change in a complex socio-political context, or
• work with individuals and groups in a way that enables them to challenge themselves, and each other, in the quest for new approaches, collaborative action and learning.

The course offers state-of-the-art knowledge on designing and facilitating multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) for inclusive, and sustainable food systems.

Your experience & real-life cases

The course is highly interactive and builds on your own experiences and cases of MSPs. You will have active discussions, work on group assignments, engage in role-plays and undertake fieldwork to explore a real-life MSP in a partner country (tentatively planned in Kenya), with a diverse group of peers from all around the world. You will practice with a wide range of participatory methodologies and tools. The course facilitators follow a flexible programme that allows adaptation to the specific needs of you and the group.

Reflect on your role as facilitator or change maker

At the end of the course you will feel confident to design, initiate, facilitate and evaluate complex collaborative processes. You will be able to facilitate a process in which diverse stakeholders are able to connect, share visions, co-create, make decisions, learn together and work collaboratively towards a common goal. As a trained facilitator, you will be able to use your role as an instrument to support partners and their collaborative efforts.

Programme

The programme builds on the 7 key principles of MSPs: Embrace systemic change; transform institutions; work with power; deal with conflict; communicate effectively; promote collaborative leadership; foster participatory learning.

The specific topics of the course are:

1. MSPs AND SYSTEMS CHANGE: What is a Multi Stakeholder Partnership (MSP)? Why do we partner? What is the cycle MSPs go through? When is partnering useful and effective? How do partnerships work in changing food systems? Introductions to complexity thinking, systems thinking and food systems.
2. POWER AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE: How to work with power, social inclusion and gender equality in partnerships? Stakeholder analysis and the role of MSPs in transforming institutions.
3. FACILITATION AND COLLABORATIVE LEARNING: Who are you as a facilitator? The neuro-science of collaboration: informing your facilitation and the MSP’s effectiveness. How can we use MSPs to enhance our learning?
4. PRACTICE: How to design and facilitate MSPs? Practicing facilitation, dealing with conflict, effective communication, working with power and group dynamics, and developing your own leadership style using a real life case.
5. INTEGRATING THE LEARNING: Creating links between the theory, tools, lessons and reflections and what this means for your work.

The course is blended: Partially online & partially Face to Face

This course directly applies the principles of interaction, participation and inclusion. You will be supported by top notch facilitators and MSP experts on how to design and facilitate collaborative processes and interventions for inclusive and sustainable food systems. The course starts with online modules and interactive Zoom sessions after which you will spend a week in the field, applying your knowledge and practicing skills. The course closes with online sessions that integrate the learning and build a community of peer supporters. The components of the course are the following:

• Online pre-course assignments for you to get to know WCDI and partners and for us to get to know your work environment and your expectations about the course;
• Online modules and weekly assignments presentation of content and knowledge;
• Individual assignments where you will read literature, watch videos, and do exercises on your own. These assignments are an essential part of the learning and most of them count for getting the certificate. They are meant to introduce or deepen knowledge and make the link between theory and your own practice. These assignments are reviewed by your peers and the course facilitators.
• Interactive online sessions Presentation of key content, review assignments and facilitate the exchange of experiences. The sessions utilize various online tools like Padlet, Mural and Mentimeter;
• Face to face sessions and field work with an existing multi-stakeholder partnership in a host country;
• Group work where you and other participants address a specific challenge or work on an assignment. Results of these assignments are shared and discussed for broader learning;
• Link to the community of practice of WCDI-alumni

Be ready for engagement and community building

Create field-visit video’s, share and discuss in online platforms, give and receive feedback on your facilitation skills and use savvy online and offline toolsfor remote stakeholder engagement.Games, social sessions and a real sense of community are core tothe design,making the courseenjoyable and supporting the learning process. All the online and offline tools andcontentas well as the personal attention byfacilitators willboost yourskillsandmindsettolevel upyour capacities as facilitator.

Online platforms: Zoom and TalentLMS

Internet connection is important for the completion of the course. Not sure about the connection in your area? Send training.cdi@wur.nl an e-mail about your situation.

We use Zoom as a facilitating platform for all our online courses. Our courses take place in general over a 6-8 week period to make the workload and time you spend online manageable.

Our online learning system is TalentLMS. Everything you need — our course programme, chatrooms, assignments, background information are in this system. TalentLMS is easy to operate, can also be accessed by your phone and has an on-and offline functionality. We even organise a technical check-in before the course starts, to test your facilities and get familiar with the tools.