Child Facilitators

Acquisition of facilitation skill is a learning process. A facilitator can become better after few rounds of real life experiences. So for a person like me who is used to facilitate the group discussions during a workshop, I normally take it for granted whenever accepting an invitation for facilitation. I am of the opinion that standard operating procedures for facilitation is applicable for all occassions, at least this is what I thought prior to last Sunday's Facilitators Briefing for the Children Forum on Child Friendly City of Petaling Jaya. The briefing is a prelude to align the appointed young facilitators on approaches and methods to be used for the Forum to be held on 27th June 2009 at the PJ Community Library. A total of 250 children 8-18 years old is expected to attend the one-day Forum.

Throughout the briefing session, I was kept on reminded by the young facilitators on dos and don'ts for dealing with the children. First of all, to smile wholeheartedly meeting with the children when they come to registration. Smiling means to be friendly to them and to gain their acceptance as Friend. After that, a lot of games and ice-breakers need to be carried out at the initial stage so that the participants are comfortable with the organisers and facilitators. It is a must to win over their heart and confident first before getting them to express their views on children issues and aspirations. However, different games are useful for different age groups. Hence, the venue is expected to have very loud noise and run over throughout the event. We have also difficulty to slot in the official opening function at the starting so as not to disrupt the momentum of proceeding. What to do then...

While gaining their support is not easy, sustaining their focus and concentration is equally difficult. As children tend to divert their attention to other things very quickly, short and precise presentation with colourful illustration and gestures are needed, of course the venue setting with "ompp and cool" element is also helpful. Using children's language is also important. No point of talking with technical jargon such as children's rights under the Children Right Convention without translating it into simple and understandable terms.

Another important thing is to crystallise their ideas and thoughts into some writable and readable terms for adult to digest. The children might not have given their ideas in a particular time slot but along their playing time, thereby it is important for the facilitators to pen down anything along the whole process, and to structure it into sentence and statement during the debriefing session. It is a big task, i believe.

I have learned a lot to lower down myself to the level of children so as to understand them better. In doing so, I have inner feeling that I am getting younger now.