I could not imagine that this refresher training would bring such new learning experience in my life. Though I have been working as Active Citizens facilitators for several years, I have gathered knowledge from this amazing programme and at the same time I got a platform to share my experience with others as well,’’ said Shamima Yeasmin, one of the experienced facilitators.
The British Council organised Refresher Training for Active Citizens Facilitators from 19 to 21 July 2016 in a hotel in Dhaka. This year, 27 facilitators joined this capacity building training. Every year, this training has been arranged for enhancing the capacity of facilitators and for introducing them with the new contents of the Active Citizens training module.
“I could not imagine that this refresher training would bring such new learning experience in my life. Though I have been working as Active Citizens facilitators for several years, I have gathered knowledge from this amazing programme and at the same time I got a platform to share my experience with others as well,’’ said Shamima Yeasmin, one of the experienced facilitators.
This three-day training focused on the core learning journey of Active Citizens and also included sessions on facilitation skills. There was very lively and fruitful discussion on issues which the facilitator identified challenging while conducting training in the communities. The session outcomes helped the master facilitators to spot the areas to work for further development of the programme. The energy level of the participant was really tremendous, which was reflected in the words of Jim Pollard, Director Business Support Services, British Council Bangladesh. Jim spent a few hours with them and listened to their inspiring stories which they brought from communities.
The full Active Citizens learning journey was demonstrated by the master facilitators through plenary sessions. And the most exciting part was home group sessions where the participants run sessions in front of the team leaders and home group members. They all realised their strengths and weaknesses themselves and feedback from other also helped them. At the end of the training, all participants said that they were getting a clearer idea of content and also developed facilitation skills.
Spontaneous participation, eagerness to learn, sharing experience, contributing to refresh the content proved that this training was much needed. Almost everyone expressed their interest in joining this kind of training in the future.