Simon Koolwijk

This video shows on how stories are visualized through participatory video stories in one week. From story board development to filming, to editing and then finally presenting and discussing the videos at a community dialogue meeting participants from social accountability partners learn to apply participatory video for dialogue with the community in discussing the progress on educational service delivery in Shashemene, Ethiopia. The training took place from 23 – 27 March, 2015 in Hawassa and Shashemene, Ethiopia. The participants inteviewed and involved 6 stakeholder groups in the discussion on the progress of educational services in Shashemene, Ethiopia. Both user groups, students, and service providers, teachers were involved in this participatory process. As experiment, also control groups from both students and teachers were involved in the PV process. The control groups came from schools, who did not participate in the social accountability process. The training was implemen...

From 18th – 20th March, 2015 twenty participatory video facilitators and practitioners attended a three day advanced training in participatory video. The twenty pv facilitators are representing 10 social accountability implementing partners (SAIPs), that are involved in implementing social accountability processes in the sectors of health, education, agriculture, water & sanitation and rural roads in the whole country of Ethiopia. The pv facilitators conducted pv interventions between October 2014 and February, 2015. This training gave them the opportunity to share their experiences and update their knowledge on participatory video, to learn to work with advanced software in video editing and to learn how to use the participatory videos for monitoring and evaluation and to discuss the opportunities and challenges on how to sustain participatory video in their organisation. Between May and July 2015, these SAIPs will continue to implement new participatory video interventions and ...

In early 2015 I conducted a Participatory Strategic Planning for a consultancy business. For this I applied the Participatory Strategic Planning (PSP)  approach, which has been developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs .  The Strategic Planning consists of six key steps, 0. Intake formulation of the focus question 1.  Formulation / Review  Mission, values/ Trend analysis and environmental scan; 2.  Practical Vision; 3.  Underlying contradictions; 4.  Strategic Directions; 5.  Operational planning. The method Step 0: Intake and formulating the focus question Before step 1 takes place in the strategic planning process, an essential step is necessary, to move forward.  This is the intake and the formulation of the focus question. The ownership of the organizational change starts at the intake. Asking the right questions and getting the right people at the table are crucial conditions for enabling a successful ...

"A whole new mind - Why right - brainers will rule the future" is a book which very much caught my inspiration. The book explains that in the coming decades the creative people will be the ones dominating and inspiring our work and economies. Daniel H. Pink explains that a lot of products and services have been standardized. Economies as China and India are much more competitative than our economies in producting standardized products. Therefore the challenge for European and American countries is to become innovative and creative. Daniel H. Pink recommends the six senses, which stimulate creative development: Design (make your product or service unique in its design) Story (connect a story to your product) Symphony (your service is like a music song, touching people at different stages) Empathy (replace yourself into the client and understand body language) Play (make people play and stimulate the inner child in them) Meaning (give meaning and understanding to y...

The last 4 weeks I have spended my time reading. Two books really caught my attention. The first one which gave me a lot of new inspiration is: "Creativiteit Hoe? Zo? - Igor Byttebier ." The book provides a number of brainstorm techniques on how to get new illunamous ideas. Normally with the traditional brainstorm methods you get the regular ideas, but with some exceptional techniques you can create new things, which you have not been thinking of before. Igor Byttebier clearifies from the beginning that creativity is not something, that is only given to a few number of people. It is something you can learn! The book gives some exercises which help you to develop these skills. Myself, I have started to look differently at pictures, photos and things in my surroundings. Last week I was looking at a picture with hot peppers! But when I looked it from a different perspective I saw women in red dresses dancing very passionately, or I saw that somebody had cut a white paper and ...

"This course was dynamic, informative, very useful and connected to our work! I can directly apply the tools in my work. I learned a lot from my colleagues. There was room for exchange and the input from the resource persons in the is course had an added value!" From 21 - 22 January 2009, Desk Officers from the development organisation ICCO participated in the second part of the training Capacity Development of Partner Organisations. This training which was facilitated by Simon Koolwijk , provided participants the space to present practical cases on how they had applied their lessons learned during the first training on 18 - 19 November 2008 . Cases where shared about capacity development of partner organisations in the Pacific, Asia and Africa. Desk officers had applied some of the organisational analysis tools to assess the capacities of their partners. Three resource persons; Hettie Walters, Angelica Senders (both from ICCO ) & Ben Haagsma ( IC Consult ) provided...

On the 18th December 2008, Simon Koolwijk conducted a training on Youth Participation at Hogeschool Utrecht - Social Department . One of the students, interviewed by another student, and the tutors are sharing their experiences about the training. Hogeschool Utrecht - Social Department is already working more than 10 years with Facili2transform . One of the students sharing his experience about the training Youth Participation. One of the tutors sharing his experiences about his work with Simon Koolwijk. Interested in a training about Youth Participation, contact Simon Koolwijk, e-mail. faccom@xs4all.nl

A very inspirational training. My toolbox has been filled, I am ready to go for the hands-on experience in the field. I am definetly going to use the workshop method and the caroussel for some multi-stakeholder interventions . Three international advisors, who will be working for ICCO in Honduras and Peru, and Stichting Stephanos , shared their enthousiasm at the end of the training facilitation methods. The training was conducted by Simon Koolwijk . The training was focused at sharing and learning theoretical principles of facilitation with the help of the caroussel method. Participants practised with two basic methods of the Technology of Participation (ToP), the Basic Conversation Method and the Brainstorm Workshop method. ToP has been developped by the Institute of Cultural Affairs - USA and is now actively being used in more than 50 countries around the world in development work, governments, companies, schools, universities and other public institutes. The methods are ve...

Great course! The discussion method is a great tool for reflections and evaluations. The course was very useful and interactive. We were involved the whole day, and did not get time to loose attention. A nice and involving way of teaching. I am inspired to use the methods at my work. Students from the University of Social Work - De Horst in Amersfoort (Hogeschool Utrecht) had a great experience on the 18th December 2008. Community Youth Development was the topic of the course. Students learned new methods for involving and engaging youth. Focus during this course were on the Technology of Participation Methods which have been developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs in the USA. The future youth workers learned to practise with the basic conversation method. Through this tool participants are able to share their observations, feelings, meanings and decisions. It is a powerful tool in getting groups focused and involved. The other method was the brainstorm workshop method. Foc...

Practical tools! It will help to focus my work as community worker! Very efficient to mobilize people and make people to move on issues they consider as important. Students from the University of Social Work of Hogeschool Utrecht - Amersfoort shared their experiences at the end of a two day training on methods for citizens' participation. On the 29th October and 5th November 2008 thirteen students got acquainted with basic facilitation methods on how to stimulate citizen's participation. Students got acquainted with the theory and principles of citizen's participation, and got acquainted with a number of basic facilitation methods for engaging and activating groups, called the Technology of Participation . The Technology of Participation methods have been developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs . From the early 50's up to late 60's a lot of experiments and pilots were done with a number of community development based methods. One of the most successfull p...

"I personally discovered some aspects of my personality on which I will have to work (want to)"; "I have learned that COACHING is a process!"; "I understand causes of some misunderstandings.." "It's a new way of staff development!" Trainers and NGO representatives coming from Albania, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro sensed a new way of learning and received new perspectives on how to do their work. The training - organized by Milieukontakt International - in coaching principles & methodologies, was conducted by Chris van de Sanden and Simon Koolwijk. The three-day training explored new ways of working. The training focused on the basics of verbal and non-verbal communication. How to establish rapport = "meaningful contact". Through role plays participants learned in which phases to ask in-depth questions related to issues which kept the coachees awake at night. Transactional analysis (TA) was another im...