CDRA’s Public Courses for 2012

1. SOCIAL CHANGE INNOVATIONS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
LOOKING AFRESH AT THE REAL WORK OF SOCIAL CHANGE.
The “Occupy” and Arab Spring movements have captured the headlines this past year. Service delivery protests in our own backyards continue to annoy the authorities. Social media promises new ways of communicating and mobilising. Yet none of these seem to suggest a clear way forward to practitioners working for social change on the ground. Protest does not always equal positive change and yet it is clear that the energies for change are there. Communities, the State and Business recognise the need for new relationships but cannot let go of the old. Some practitioners are getting it right, but many of us are a bit frozen, stuck in old paradigms, projects, routines and relationships.
This 5-day workshop is aimed at unfreezing and unlocking our strategic thinking and stimulating new ideas. We will interrogate different theories of social change. We will invite several innovative social change leaders and practitioners, who are doing things differently, to tell us about their practices and will collectively engage with these to make sense of them, looking behind and beyond to find what it is that is really needed. From this we will help each other to rethink our own approaches and relationships and return home with fresh thinking, ideas and possibly some new allies and initiatives.
DATE: Monday 15 – Friday 19 October
FACILITATOR: Doug Reeler

2. WRITING FOR DEVELOPMENT
AN APPLIED APPROACH TO WRITING FOR WORK
Internal documents, donor reports and writing for publication are all part of our organisational work requiring good thinking and writing skills.
In this course, you will learn how to;
• Use the writing process to inform your thinking and understanding of your work.
• Communicate your thoughts and experiences to clients, donors and colleagues effectively.
• Get your reports, articles or proposals actually written (without too many painkillers).
• Find the pleasure and discover the fun of writing.
Writing for Development is an intensive 4 day immersion in the practice of writing.
Two 4-day courses will be offered in 2012
DATES: Tuesday 22 – Friday 25 May and Tuesday 4 – Friday 7 September
FACILITATOR: Sandra Hill

3. MAKING M & E WORK
MOVING FROM TIRED TO INSPIRED.
Monitoring and evaluation, beyond just keeping our projects and organisations accountable to donors, remains a critical challenge for many practitioners working in development. This course explores ways and methods that use M&E not just for ticking off boxes and counting outputs, but for real participatory learning and sense making within organisations, and between organisations and beneficiaries.
Participants will reconnect with the thinking and practices that underlie a developmental approach to social change, and ultimately the question of how M&E should better serve these needs and aspirations. Course work will illuminate, contextualise, appreciate and critique current practices and notions of monitoring and evaluation. Skills such as asking questions, listening, reflective thinking and planning, which underlie a learning orientation towards M&E, will be taught and practised during the course. An organisational perspective that will help participants to identify and understand M&E challenges within their back-home context will be offered.
Participants will leave with not only increased personal knowledge and skill, but a clear picture of the next step/s towards improving M&E processes within their own organisations.
DATE: Monday 12 – Friday 16 November
FACILITATORS: Rubert Van Blerk and Sue Soal

4. SHORT STORIES FROM THE FIELD
APPLYING FICTION TECHNIQUES TO WRITING ABOUT WORK
How do you convey what it is you do in your job? How do you impress on others the work of your organisation, or the value of its contribution, in a world already awash with information? How do you begin to make sense of it yourself? How do you share an experience from the field with colleagues, in a way that makes them sit up and learn from it too?
Inspired by the age-old traditions of storytelling, this course will help you find the story in what you do and to craft it into compelling pieces of writing, drawing from the relatively new discipline of creative non-fiction.
This course is also available as an in-house process for teams and organisations interested in a fresh experience of organisational learning, and/or a grounded, phenomenological approach to monitoring and evaluation.
Short Stories from the Field is an intensive 4 day immersion in the practice of writing.
DATE: Tuesday 24 – Friday 27 July
FACILITATOR: Sandra Hill

5. DEVELOPMENTAL FACILITATION COURSE
‘BRINGING LIFE TO GROUP PROCESSES’
Do you enjoy working with people and facilitating processes that enable and energise people in a workshop or meeting or training course. If you’re looking for something different, creative, lively, practical and yet still learning new skills to facilitate in a more developmental way, then this is the course for you . The facilitation course allows one to explore and create, to learn and reflect, to lead and follow, to collaborate, to have fun and feel safe to take risks.
Whether you’re new to the sector or needing to enliven your practice, this course is an opportunity to share and learn from the experiences of fellow facilitators. Learn the core methodologies for facilitation, then have an opportunity to practice facilitation in pairs and receive feedback that will build and enhance your facilitation.
DATE: Monday 16 – Friday 20 April
FACILITATORS: Shelley Arendse and Desiree Paulsen

6. ADVANCED FACILITATION COURSE
‘WORKING IN THE MOMENT’
‘Does it feel like there’s an elephant in the room?’ Something needs to be expressed and the group is unable to share it. Have you ever felt stuck, or challenged, or at a loss and not meeting your group’s need when facilitating a group process? Then this course is for you.
We invite those facilitators wanting to reflect on their practice and share their interesting and challenging experiences. If you want to vivify your facilitation practice, learn simple and practical methodologies to broaden your skills, attend the advanced facilitation course and explore how to work with unfolding processes that emerge unexpectedly. This course will provide a learning experiential space to practice the new skills and methods learnt and receive feedback that is both constructive and affirmative.
We will share, network, innovate, discover, learn from, design and work in a creative, fun environment. The personal development aspect of the course enables one to be more conscious and aware of how you bring all aspects of yourself into the facilitation role. We hope that through the process you will learn to be less of a ‘facipulater’ (manipulated facilitation) and more of a facilitator. Join a diverse group of facilitators and take your practice to the next level.
DATE: Monday 11 – Friday 15 June
FACILITATORS: Desiree Paulsen and Shelley Arendse

COLLABORATIVE EVENTS

7. PAYING ATTENTION: A COURSE IN PROCESS (A QUELLA – CDRA COLLABORATION)
“… HEARD, HALF HEARD, IN THE STILLNESS
BETWEEN TWO WAVES OF THE SEA.” TS ELIOT
Human organizations emerge from processes that can be comprehended but never controlled.” Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers
This is a course for consultants and development practitioners who wish to work more directly and intentionally with social process, for those who know process requires more than a set of fixed formulae and methods … yet struggle to see it, and therefore to find more precisely what that is.
What do we mean when we ask others to “trust the process”? What are we suggesting when we say “The process was wonderful – don’t ask me how, but it all turned out OK”? And when we say we are “designing a process” what are we actually undertaking … and what will continue to elude our grasp?
Often we see an air of vulnerability in people responsible for enabling the participation of others in process. This is brought about by their alertness to the moment – paying attention to what is happening in the process – in order to summons the best possible next contribution. Yet too often this sense of not quite knowing becomes awkwardness and even a feeling of fraudulence.
There is good reason why people shake when they first stand in front of others and try to contribute to, or facilitate social process. To participate in– let alone attempt to intervene into social process – is to engage with huge and invisible forces. And so often, in the presence of this force, we turn to mechanical and predetermined techniques that have the unintended consequence of seeking to control, rather than work with the living process that is emerging.
This course will offer opportunities to experience, see, conceptualise and make sense of social process itself. Working with the dimensions of time and space; and movement within these, it will draw on and exercise faculties of perception that lie within us but remain largely unused. It will emphasise how observation of the process of others necessarily entails and includes observation of one’s own process. Out of this joining of self to other; and of inner to outer, comes new insights into the field of process, and grounded abilities to work more effectively with individuals, groups, organisations and whole communities.
We see participants emerging out of the course with an enhanced practical, experiential and theoretical understanding of social process. Further, the practical implications of this for the whole work cycle will have been explored, including how work is described, proposed on and contracted for, planned, pursued, adjusted and learnt from.
“Their life is always transitions … Heroes do not fix, but flow, bend forward ever and invent a resource for every moment.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
DATE: Wednesday 26 – Saturday 29 September
FACILITATORS: Sue Soal and Liz Smith
NB. As the above course incorporates movement the venue will be Erin Hall, Rondebosch and cost of this course is R3,500.

FEES, ACCOMMODATION AND TRAVEL

All workshops to be run at the CDRA office in Woodstock, Cape Town
• Local and national NGOs & CBOs pay R2 500
• International NGOs/Government/Donors pay R5 000
Costs include workshop reading manuals, journals, all stationery, a light lunch and teas.
NB. Course fees and venues that are different to the above will be clearly indicated in the course blurb.

ACCOMMODATION IN CAPE TOWN
Our course co-ordinator, Linda Njambatwa, is able to refer participants who do not live in Cape Town, to local guest houses. Bookings and payment remain the responsibility of participants.
Participants from outside of Cape Town should also budget to cover the cost of travel and accommodation, which remains the responsibility of the participant.

APPLICATION FOR COURSES FOR 2011
To request an application form, please contact: Linda Njambatwa (linda@cdra.org.za). With regard to in-house courses please also direct all your enquiries to Linda, who will gladly assist.
Telephone: +27 21 462 3902
Fax: +27 21 462 3918