What Key Characteristics and Skills Facilitate a Community Participation Approach?
Above all, those promoting community participation need to be able to facilitate a process, rather than to direct it. Facilitators need to have genuine confidence in a community’s members and in their knowledge and resources. A facilitator should be willing to seek out local expertise and build on it while bolstering knowledge and skills as needed. Key characteristics and skills important to facilitating community participation include: • Commitment to community-derived solutions to community-based problems • Political, cultural, and gender sensitivity • Ability to apply learning and behavior change principles and theories • Ability to assess, support, and build capacities in the community • Confidence in the community’s expertise • Technical knowledge of the health or other issue(s) the project will address • Ability to communicate well, especially by actively listening • Ability to facilitate group meetings • Programmatic and managerial strengths • Organizational development expertis
