Facilitation attempt #1

Marlinde didn't know exactly how she was going to go about the meeting, it started an hour late as things were downloaded and printed off and people got more food and talked about other actions. When it began, it didn't really begin because Marlinde was reading the info I had emailed her and a pair of people were looking for a mission statement and vision that had been drafted last year. When that was found we all started reading it and commenting on it with no structure to the discussion. I lead the discussion for a few minutes by starting at one paragraph in the vision and discussing as a group which parts we wanted to keep and which parts we didn't. Then it became a discussion of whether the group would focus only on environmental issues or if we would also do actions on social issues. We agreed that our platform would focus on environmental issues only, and support the WSO in their work on social issues.

As we were about to move on to the next paragraph people became impatient and Kealan and others wanted to move on to setting goals. There was a debate about whether or not setting a vision was a necessary or beneficial task for the group. Because Kealan and another girl had to leave soon we agreed as a group to talk about some goals and to come back to the vision and mission statement.

I got up to write on the flip chart as people brainstormed some goals for the university, e.g. 100% renewable energy use. This was really positive and upbeat, but was a bit hard to keep as brainstorming as some people wanted to debate the issues as they went up on the board. When we had finished brainstorming and started looking at the wording and details of the goals it was hard for us to come to agreements on what measurements to use, what our goals actually were etc. For example, do we want to ask for locally produced food if it is less energy-intensive to get food from another region? And what about food such as chocolate that we don't mind the university getting from further away as long as it is fair trade? Eventually it was time for me to go and we agreed to create a shared document with the goals and let people edit them and develop them and come back to discuss them further next time.

Lessons learned:

1. the facilitator needs to be identified ahead of time and the role of the facilitator must be explained if the group is new or new members are present
2. the facilitator must be prepared to lead the meeting, either with goals already established or able to lead a quick discussion to determine the goals of the meeting
   
3. the goals of the session must be explained/agreed upon clearly at the beginning of the meeting
4. not everyone thinks that creating a vision is a good use of time - either the purpose of a vision statement has to be explained in a convincing manner, or the people who aren't interested in visioning should be aware ahead of time that this is what will happen at the meeting so they don't come if they don't want to take part
5. the goals of each step of the discussion must be explained clearly i.e. "this is a brainstorming exercise, so we will take all suggestions down now and then discuss them in the next stage."
6. a system of identfying speakers/agreeement such as the consensus model would make discussions less frustrating and more effective