"Volunteers for Disaster Recovery: Regular Liaison Meeting of NPOs and Ministries" was held by The Japan Civil Network for Disaster Relief in East Japan (JCN), with about 150 organizations participating. JCN has more than 800 NPO/NGO, corporations and organizations in Japan.
The first regular liaison meeting was held on April 7, 2011 in the midst of the chaos all of Japan was experiencing. The meeting room was set up classroom-style, with representatives from each ministry in the front of the room facing rows of participants. Each ministry's representative presented a report and shared information, then participants were asked if they had any questions. Ikuo Sugimura, who was in the meeting representing the Disaster Recovery Support Section of FAJ, thought that the meeting formats were effective in terms of sharing each other's situations. However, he also felt that this style, allowing only the ones who wanted to ask questions to do so, would sooner or later reach a deadlock.
Mariko Suzuki and Ikuo Sugimura participated in the second regular liaison meeting. What they saw was that while there were still a limited number of people asking questions, some people expressed their complaints about their situations - which hadn't changed a bit - and some people hijacked the meeting to express their views even when the emcee tried to stop them.
Suzuki and Sugimura thought that it was a missed opportunity not to use this liaison meeting, with so many disaster recovery support organizations participating, as a place for discussion and dialogue. What could be possible to create highly functioning networking? So, they decided to propose other possible formats for the meeting to the JCN, the hosting organization. Suzuki and Sugimura got together with other people in their section to envision how to make this regular liaison meeting useful for the participants and ultimately for the recovery activities, and what possible meeting designs would enable this. This discussion resulted in a proposal titled "A Proposal to facilitate meetings to support disaster recovery--Revitalization of the JCN using the Regular Liaison Meetings."
On May 12th 2011, just a few hours before the third Liaison Meeting, Tokuda and Sugimura met Mr. Hiroaki Sekiguchi, a member of JCN who was responsible for planning and running the Regular Liaison Meetings, in the tea room near the venue of the meeting to give him their proposal. The outline of that proposal is as follows.
Purpose:
To transform the Regular Liaison Meeting into a space where the collaborations and cooperation between ministries and organizations, and among organizations, will be facilitated to lead to problem-solving and the creation of new approaches to deal with problems.
Measures:
1) To set up opportunities for people to break up into smaller groups according the themes and issues
2) To provide a place for the whole picture to be shared by everyone in the meeting
3) To explore the right sizes for each meeting.
Sekiguchi's response to their proposal was; "It may be difficult to change the format of the Regular Liaison Meeting because it was implemented according to the intention of the Japanese government, but we would like you to join the Procedure Team. We want your ongoing cooperation to improve the Regular Liaison Meeting."
Tokuda immediately accepted Sekiguchi's request. This was a natural decision: the FAJ had joined JCN as soon as the latter was formed because the FAJ was seeking an opportunity to contribute to the enhancement of the network amongst supporter organizations, one of the key pillars of JCN. Also, Tokuda thought that if the Regular Liaison Meeting came to be recognized as one of the targets of support, there would be an opportunity for more of the FAJ members to contribute their talents and skills, given some of them might find it less difficult to participate in the meeting in Tokyo than to visit the tsunami-stricken areas.
Tokuda, Sugimura and Kotou took turns participating in the Procedure Team meetings to support boardwork, confirmation of the opinions expressed, as well as making proposals about the format of the Regular Liaison Meeting. As a result, an opinion exchange session was added to the Fourth Regular Liaison Meeting on June 1 so that participant organizations could get to know each other and exchange information. The FAJ Disaster Recovery Support Section made their first request for all FAJ members to volunteer for this session, and five members supported the facilitation of the session.
Members of the Procedure Team had several additional meetings to improve the quality of the Regular Liaison Meetings. Their question was how they could not only provide an opportunity for the NPOs and voluntary organizations to get to know each other, but also to invite their valuable proposals. They came up with the idea to have two kinds of meetings, call them A meeting and B meeting, and have them alternate. The A Meeting is for NPOs and volunteers to discuss solutions on each issue. The B Meeting is to add government members in the meeting to have discussions and make proposals.
Finally, on July 11, this idea was realized. The first "Proposal Preparation Meeting by Disaster Recovery Volunteers and NPOs", nicknamed "A" Meeting was held. The discussion centered on producing proposals on four agenda items: (1) Activities in Disaster-Stricken Areas. (2) Support Methods perceived from women's point of view (from more gender sensitive points of view). (3) Solidarity among the Disaster Recovery Volunteer Center and NPOs, (4) How to ascertain unseen needs in the disaster-stricken area. In the A Meeting, people broke into small groups: each table had a facilitator for the discussion and a "graphicker" (short for "graphic recorder") who makes visuals of what's discussed right away. Iijima participated in the meeting as a graphicker. She was surprised how quickly this format change caused people's participation; she found that the discussion in the next table got so excited and loud that she was not able to hear what people were saying at her own table. When she had supported previously the meeting was conducted in the old regular format - the tables were arranged in rectangular shape, leaving a huge space between people who were facing each other. Iijima had felt as if the space reflected the distance among the people, and only a limited number of people were speaking in the meeting. However, with this new format small islands made of tables were scattered around the room to support people talking in a smaller group. She felt that the same two hours produced a totally different experience amongst people.
Before the July meeting in this new format, some people actually said "These meetings are not expected to produce any results, they are only to provide an alibi that government officers visited disaster-stricken areas" or "there is no use in doing this." By the time the July meeting was over, someone said that "This was a single most valuable meeting I have ever participated in" and that made the main facilitator, Tokuda feel relieved and validated.
However, there was no time to rest because they needed to get ready for the B Meeting, formally known as "Regular Meetings among disaster recovery volunteers, NPOs and representatives of each Japanese government ministry." The room was set up in a variation of a "fish bowl." A hexagonal round table was set in the center of the room for participants of each discussion on the agenda, and these center tables were surrounded by outer circle tables for other participants to observe the discussion. In this format, unlike former meetings, people were able to fully discuss each topic until issues and needs were clarified. Moreover, people began to be in communication at the start of this meeting and this carried on even after the meeting. People continued to provide new proposals to the Japanese government offices, for example, on the topic of how to mobilize recovery support.
※ A Fish Bowl: A method of discussion where people are divided into two groups: the people who discuss the matter and the people who observe their interactions and learn better ways to communicate for themselves from the discussion they observe. Here in this meeting, the fish bowl was used as the method to set up the room.
Changing programs, the layout of the room, the number of people at each table, etc. is a simple and easy way to change a meeting format.
But doing so in a relatively large-scale meeting requires more than these simple changes. It requires numerous proposals and negotiations in advance, and most importantly, building up trust among stakeholders.
After the July meeting, Iijima, who was already a member of the Disaster Recovery Support Section of the FAJ, participated in the weekly JCN Administrators Meeting for the next six months to facilitate effective information exchange.
In parallel with the meetings in Tokyo, the JCN Local Meetings were held in three prefectures in the Tohoku area. These local meetings aimed to create collaboration among supporter organizations in each prefecture. Since the first meeting was held in May 2011, hosted by Miyagi prefecture, more than 30 meetings were held in total. The FAJ began its support for this series of local meetings starting in November 2011 in "The Local Meeting in Iwate."
The host, venue and topics were different in each of these meetings, but the structures were almost always the same: Part I starts with story-sharing by a speaker related to the particular theme of the meeting, then Part II is a panel discussion including the speaker as a panelist, and Part III is discussion among participants. Usually the FAJ was asked to facilitate Part III. Although it is important to design Part III by taking into account the purposes and flows of the entire meeting, it was not always possible for FAJ to participate in the preparation of the meeting from scratch.
Especially in the early days, not being able to grasp in advance what they needed to know to facilitate Part III, the FAJ often had to create the facilitation plan for the meeting on the spot in the meeting, based on what they observed in the moment. Sometimes the FAJ facilitated Part II mainly to secure enough time for participants to have dialogue amongst themselves.
However, the way FAJ supported the JCN Local Meeting has changed throughout some phases.
This was the sixth Local Meeting in Iwate prefecture. Since it had been almost two years since the great disaster the initial flood of supporters was decreasing, the JCN was committed to using this local meeting to determine some long-term strategies for NPOs so that they could continue to support the recovery activities. The JCN requested the FAJ to facilitate in the group discussions of the Part III "Connect Session" of the local meeting, when participants broke into groups to have a 50-minute discussion.
Onoue went to the facilitators group meeting as soon as he arrived at the venue, the local government building in Kamaishi City. There were four facilitators for the meeting, two from NPO IWATE Fukko Collaboration Center and two from the FAJ, including Onoue.
Onoue was worried that the 40 minute prep meeting was insufficient to create alignment among the four group facilitators about how to facilitate the Group Meetings they were to facilitate in the Sixth Local Meeting.
For outsiders like Onoue, the prep meetings with local facilitators are a very important information source to predict how the space in the meeting will go. Onoue confirmed the outcome (goal) for the Part III Session and wrote it on the paper. The outcome was "participants are able to express what they think and feel about the values and approaches to creating connections with public administrative organizations." As soon as he wrote this on the paper, Onoue looked at the other facilitators to see if they were aligned with this. Onoue found other facilitators were also thinking hard if it was possible to create this outcome in 50-minutes group discussion and if so, what was the design of the process to attain it.
Then Onoue showed his proposal for the last question to the participants in the group meeting: "How would you like to create connections with administrative offices, specifically occasions to talk with them?" Onoue looked at other facilitators again to check if the question began to be owned by them, because they were the ones who would give this question to participants at their tables.
If a big part of the limited time allotted to Part III would be spent answering questions regarding the contents from Parts I and Part II, the question they prepared for Part III might look out of context, and that would not produce the intended outcome in the end. The facilitation of Part III required utmost precision. That is why Onoue went over what was to be covered beforehand and shared it with other members.
It was not easy to predict the number of people who would stay until the end of the meeting, especially at the Local Meeting. It was also not easy to predict the number of participants at each small discussion table because people would choose where to sit based on the topic of each table, and this would be selected on the spot based on the topic of the main speaker (話題提供者). Before ending the prep meeting, Onoue advised other facilitators to prepare several ways of facilitation for different numbers of people and to simulate them in advance.
After this prep meeting, each facilitator worked on their individual preparation including making the necessary story board ("paper play" in Japanese.)
The transition to Part III was scheduled at 4:00PM, and at that time each group facilitator was to set up the space of their discussion table. Confirming that this was happening and trusting the other facilitators' abilities, Onoue picked up a microphone. He thought he would ask them to take a seat side by side, then let the facilitation navigate through the flow of the dialogue.
He made the announcement: "The group discussion starts in two minutes. Please choose a topic and take your seat in that group." Each group facilitator welcomed participants to their table and the dialogue of Part III started.
On November 29, 2013, seven FAJ members were on the Bullet Train heading for the 8th Local Meeting in Miyagi, which was held in Iwanuma City in Miyagi Prefecture. Four of them were Asaba, Urayama and Iijima, members of the Disaster Recovery Support Section in the FAJ, and Kimiko Kato who would become a member later. They, as volunteers, were discussing how to facilitate the meetings in the afternoon. The main theme of this Local Meeting in Miyagi was "Thinking about community building after the phase of temporary housing." In Part I and II of the meeting, five guests were to share their topics on the stage. Then the five speakers were to break into five discussion tables and the participants would choose which dialogue they would participate with. Asaba was to be in the role of the coordinator and primary facilitator, Urayama, was kind of a one-person flying squadron, looking at the entire picture to support wherever needed, and other five FAJ members were to facilitate in each dialogue groups in Part III.
In the prep meeting on the train, Asaba looked very nervous because this was her/his first time to play the roles of coordinator and primary facilitator. They expected to have more participants than usual because the theme of the meeting was a perfect fit for the occasion. The five guests were invited from a variety of fields to provide more diversity in topics. Urayama showed tremendous support for Asaba in the prep meeting. As they got the space of the meeting, they began to propose their ideas.
* Story boards ("Kamishibai," originally a method to tell stories to kids using illustration boards of the story) which facilitator use to communicate instructions or questions.
* Story boards ("Kamishibai," originally a method to tell stories to kids using illustration boards of the story) are used by the facilitator to communicate instructions or questions.
Upon arriving at the venue, they introduced themselves to the staff of JCN and began individual preparations for the meeting. The purpose, goals and rough idea of how to proceed with the meeting had already been shared among them, and there were specific items that each group facilitator was expected to decide, such as precise time allocation and wording of "questions" used at each table they were to facilitate. Each group facilitator introduced themselves to the speaker who would be at their table and checked the flow of group dialogue with them. They then prepared the story boards they would use at their table. The on-the-spot preparation in this limited time is very important because there is always something the facilitators come to realize only when they are at the site of the facilitation.
The Local Meeting started on time. Despite the nervousness she experienced, Asaba facilitated through Part I and Part II. She saw the faces of group facilitators in the audience. They were listening attentively to what each speaker said on the stage to grasp the contents of their talks. Asaba, suddenly noticed that the hall was filled with additional chairs, and she wondered how many audience members were here now.
By the time Part III started there were about 150 participants. It looked like 80 to 90 percent of the participants stayed even to the latter part of the Meeting. The number of participants was unprecedented and beyond their expectation. Facilitators could not imagine how many people would come to their table until Part III actually started. As we said before, participants would pick the topic of the table they wanted to join after hearing Part I and Part II.
As expected, Iijima's group discussion table received 40 to 50 participants, the largest number of all the discussion tables. It was almost inappropriate to call it as a group, it should be called an individual event.
Asaba and Urayama thought about joining Iijima's table to support her, but they didn't do it. More facilitators do not necessarily mean more effective facilitation. They thought it would yield a better outcome to watch her with trust. Iijima broke her group into sub-groups of four people and asked the speaker to walk around to these sub-groups. This was her way of making sure that everyone got a chance to speak. Her focus seemed to be on finding ways for the participants to speak and listen to each other, and thereby have a meaningful time.
The Local Meeting in Iwanuma gave the FAJ members an opportunity to recognize the changes they had created both in terms of how to create the space of dialogue, including proceedings and preparation, and how to support the JCN.
One example of this is that Mr. Tsuyoshi Ikeza realized the importance of the preparatory meeting to create the appropriate space for the actual meeting through his experience of working together with the FAJ through Local Meetings. He allowed a series of preparatory meetings of both JCN and FAJ staff. This was particularly empowering for Asaba because this was her first time to coordinate the entire support activities as a member of the FAJ Disaster Recovery Support Section. Asaba and Tokuda got to meet Mr. Ikeza in person when he came to Tokyo to discuss and coordinate a blue-print of the programs in the Local Meetings.
Another change was made with the length of the dialogue time, from the usual 60 minutes to a little longer 75 minutes. This was because the event hosts weighted more importance on dialogue among participants. This consideration resulted in active and passionate group dialogue and a higher satisfaction rate in exit surveys from the participants.
The process of support through facilitation doesn't necessarily take place only in preparation and actual meetings. After the event it is important that all people who engaged in the planning get together to "reflect" on the event so that what they learned will be passed on to future planners. Everyone knows the importance of this, but it is also true that everyone is too busy. As the staff of JCN were under the pressure of mountainous amount of work, the reflection meetings were often held only among the members of the FAJ. But for this Local Meeting in Iwanuma, Mr. Ikeza, a JCN staff who was in charge of the event, was able to manage to be in the reflection session in response to a request for his participation from Asaba and Iijima. The meeting was conducted through Skype but nevertheless it was in this meeting that the off-limits door to get involved in the program planning for Part I and Part II of the Local Meeting opened up for the FAJ.
The Local Meeting in Iwanuma was a turning point for all of them. After this, the JCN and the FAJ started to experience themselves as a tag team for creating and conducting the entire coherent process of the Local Meeting from the preparatory meetings to the reflection after the event. This round of the Local Meetings also generated changes in operations in the FAJ Disaster Recovery Support Section. The FAJ began to share via email the entire process of their part in the Local Meeting with all other FAJ members, including the members who will not be in the Local Meeting, so that numerous tasks such as collecting information, program design, finding volunteer supporters, etc. can be picked up and conducted by FAJ members whenever they can do it.
Asaba and Urayama had joined the Disaster Recovery Support Section in July, so they were relatively new members, but through creating the new procedures described above, the section was able to establish a structure than can render support for the meetings at the same quality regardless who is assigned to a particular task.
The Local Meeting itself and the positioning of the FAJ in the Meeting changed at each Meeting. In the Local Meeting in Iwate in August 2014, Iwate Fukko Collaboration Center managed the entire proceeding of the Meeting. In Part II of the Meeting, they introduced the "buzz session", where people broke into three-person groups for a few minutes to share what they began to think after listening to the case studies presented by speakers on the stage. This allowed time to have a chat with participants who had been assigned the role of listeners for a long time. It changed the mood in the room and had a positive impact on the Meeting by facilitating vibrant conversations. That made it easy for participants to ask questions even in later different sessions.
At the Local Meeting in Miyagi in October, several local organizations were to facilitate the group discussion in Part III. Then, FAJ provided a framework for the group discussion so that each group could produce outcomes with certain quality. Group facilitators were able to facilitate group meetings without falling into some pitfalls. The final sharing from each group received high acclaim for being easy to follow.
"Facilitation" doesn't necessarily mean to facilitate the meetings only. Likewise, there is no one definite form for supporting people.
All we can do is to accumulate these small changes and keep moving forward one step at a time, trusting that all of this will leave us ultimately able to support the disaster-stricken people, evacuees, and supporters.
As the FAJ was collaborating with the JCN, being committed to "Enhancing the networking among supporter organizations," the FAJ also acquired connections with individual organizations in the collaboration network. In particular, the Nationwide Evacuee Support Meeting hosted regularly by the JCN is attended by various organizations from all over Japan just like the Local Meetings are. Sometimes participant organizations who liked the style of dialogue in the meeting, later requested our support for their organization. A good example of this is our collaboration with JANIC: Japan NGO Center for International Cooperation.
※ Buzz session: breaking people into small groups to have conversations easily. "Buzz" is the buzzing sound of flying bees.
JANIC, one of the most prominent International networking NGOs in Japan, was founded in 1987 by a group of NGOs to promote international cooperation. JANIC's goal is to achieve a peaceful and equitable global society where people are liberated from hunger, poverty and violations of human rights. In 2012, JANIC was working on a project to make a presentation report titled "The Joint Review - The Debrief of Projects Verification" covering all the knowledge acquired through their support activities in the affected areas of the Great East Japan Earthquake and presented it at the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, which would be presented in three years in Sendai City. JANIC planned to hold a workshop where all supporting organizations could share their experience of their support activities and turn them into materials for the Joint Report. The FAJ was requested to facilitate the workshop for JANIC. JANIC came to know about the FAJ and its style of facilitation through their own participation and experience in The Nationwide Evacuee Support Meeting.
Urayama of the Disaster Recovery Support Section of the FAJ, together with Onoue and Iijima, worked on JANIC's workshops in Tokyo, Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima including the program design and the facilitation at each site. The results of this workshops were analyzed along with other extensive data and published two years later in May 2014 as "East Japan Great Earthquake Civil Society Support Activities--Joint Review project verification result report--from the perspective of the International Cooperation NGO".
In this year Urayama worked on other projects stemming from newly acquired connections with other international NGOs.
ADRA Japan (Adventist Development and Relief Agency Japan), a specified nonprofit corporation, is a global NGO based on Christian beliefs. They first met FAJ members in the Disaster Imagination Game for Relief Activities by Disaster Volunteers in Shizuoka prefecture. ADRA had already been providing support and aid for many disaster-struck cities and towns and they planned to have a Futabamachi's students' meeting in collaboration with Futabamachi town so that their junior and senior high school students who had evacuated to many different areas could get together. Urayama, assigned to be the project coordinator, had extensive discussions with both the staff of ADRA and the residents of Futabamachi. In these discussions one resident said that "I want this meeting to be a kind of class reunion for students." This inspired Urayama to design the workshop as a place where the evacuated students can get together and fully enjoy their reunion after a long period of separation. As a facilitator, Urayama always thinks it's important to draw out deep feelings and intentions that lie in the background of the hosts through repetition of discussions, and to reflect these in the design of the space for the workshop. His style of this digging and reflecting was fully expressed in this project.
The main facilitator of the Meeting was Urayama. He asked that members of the FAJ and young people from other organization be invited to serve as group session facilitators in the meeting. Asaba, Iijima, Onoue, and Sugiyama, members of the Disaster Recovery Support Section of the FAJ, and two sub members were invited as group facilitators. Urayama also invited young people he had met in the Facilitation Skill Seminars hosted by the FAJ in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures. These young people belong to an organization called "Link with Fukushima", usually called "Lin-Fuku."
Lin-Fuku is an organization created by people from Fukushima prefecture. Young members who came to this workshop were college kids when the disaster struck. Urayama's intention to invite them was to give some role models for students from Futabamachi. As intended, classmates from Futabamachi gathered and filled the meeting with their lively conversations.
As the network expands, more organizations are available to be collaborated with, which results in providing support for people in many layers. This tends to be true even now,