Facilitation continues to be used to support disaster recovery efforts since the East Japan Great Earthquake. What have we, The Facilitators Association of Japan, the specified nonprofit organization established in 2003 (FAJ), learned from this new experience as an NPO corporation, and what can we expect to unfold from here?
Let's reflect on our activities over the last four years to shed light on what we can do to prepare for disasters in the future?
The FAJ has felt our way in taking on supporting the recovery from the disaster using our core competence, facilitation skills, since March 11, 2011.
We have now taken some time to pause and reflect on what we have done for the last four-and-a-half years; to consider the implication of this way of engaging with the disaster recover, and to summarize what actions we see should be continued and what should be taken on newly.
How can we, the members of the FAJ, make our facilitation-mind and skills available to" build a society in which people experience a bond with one another."
In order to deal with this question, the FAJ has been working on various projects summed up by taglines such as "Go out in the field" in 2007, "Create the field" in 2008 and "Connect the fields" in 2008.
Standing on the foundation built through these projects, in 2010 the FAJ finally began to work as a "corporation" not as a group of individual members when the compound disaster of the East Japan Great Earthquake, Tsunami and incidents in the atomic power plants - the biggest "field" ever - collapsed on us.
Before the disaster happened, the FAJ was already in the process of formulating our specific actions to build the society by utilizing facilitation skills as an organization. We had one assumption: to tackle social issues and problems through facilitation, we needed to be aware that there were two different phases: direct relations with people in distress, and indirect relations among supporting organizations.
Needless to say, this assumption was based on two pillars of social work: "direct supports" such as case work and group work, and "indirect supports" such as community work. Because these two angles had already been taken into consideration by FAJ, when they set up the new section called the Disaster Recovery Support they were able to clearly express the two focus points: 1) "Rebuilding the Local Community and Resident-Oriented Recovery Support", and 2) "Enhancing the Network among Supporting Organizations".
The FAJ has had some support with realizing the second focus, "Enhancing the network among supporting organizations". Endo, Suzuki and Tokuda are on the Board of Directors of some of the interim supporting organizations. In addition, a new organization, "The Japan Civil Network for Disaster Relief in East Japan (JCN) was established on March 30, 2011, and FAJ Members saw some roles they could play there. On the other hand, as for the first focus point of "Rebuilding the local community and residents-oriented recovery support," despite the FAJ flagging it as important issue, they didn't have a clue about how to realize it.
The approach taken by many NPOs and NGOs is to choose one specific geographical area based on some criteria, then move the staff to that area to render support activities if needed. But the FAJ didn't have that choice. One big factor was the lack of sufficient leads to connections in the local areas. The FAJ didn't know anyone who could provide the initial introduction within the community. But an even bigger factor was the unique operational features of the FAJ. Despite the large scale of their operation, the FAJ doesn't have any proprietary paid staff. All members of the Disaster Recovery Support Section have their own jobs. They participate with the FAJ activities, doing "what they can do, when they can and as much as they can," all on a volunteer basis. Thus, the FAJ had to look for a different approach than the conventional one.
Without any strong connection with the Tohoku area, and without a structure to allow us to devote ourselves to disaster recovery fulltime, we were forced to take an approach to pull a thin thread to find a way in; namely using occasional enquiries from people in Tohoku areas, visiting them, and continuing to visiti them as long as the situation permits. Obviously, there was no specific need for facilitation skills and/or services in these enquiries, thus our evaluation criteria for our visit was not based on the need for facilitation, but on whether or not we were needed in the local site now, and would it lead us to eventually being able to bring in facilitation to support the rebuilding of the local communities and fostering residents-oriented recovery support or not.
Of course, we knew we were not visiting the Tohoku area as independent volunteers. We were aware that whatever we said and did would be perceived as activities by the FAJ, an organization which has "facilitation" as part of its name. Inherently, facilitation is not for grandstanding. Especially in the beginning we were required to act in a reserved manner. In other words, it was important for us to "be" facilitation, not try to "do" facilitation.
Still in some local areas, the connection with the local entity, which started in the form of the FAJ's response to their request to provide a seminar on facilitations, turned into the longest-term relationship. It is the case of Minamisoma City, already introduced in the earlier part of this booklet. The FAJ's support for them using facilitation started with a seminar on facilitation - specifically a seminar on the roles of facilitators in dialogues. The very essence of FAJ's support for disaster recovery through facilitation started with this seminar.
Gradually FAJ members receded from the foreground to the background as they shifted their roles and approaches from being "supporters of local events," or "facilitation-sitters" for the workshops conducted by local residents, to "advisors for local residents to design their own programs." Over time, these residents moved into the center stages of the activities. This could be seen as a demonstration of the very nature of facilitation: to empower people's initiative and spontaneity.
"Facilitation" does not always mean leading a conversation. It also means "accompanying" or even "attentively watching from the sideline." It seems that the unassuming approach is necessary not only before the strong relationship is built, but also after the facilitators have come to be recognized as facilitators.
We must never force disaster victims to accept whatever the supporters can or want to provide. This is the case not only in the context of facilitation, but in the general context of "supporting others." Said more directly, nothing is more outrageous than seeing the disaster support as a stage to express our skills and know-how. There have been occasions where this has happened in some volunteer supporting activities, and it inevitably causes problems. However, it is also necessary that you clearly let people know what you can provide. This gives people the opportunity to examine whether they believe your contribution is necessary or valuable for them, and that makes effective support possible. Minamisoma is the best-case scenario of this working very well.
As for the other focus point, enhancing the network among supporting organizations, the FAJ, as a participating member of the JCN, had a distinct perspective and we were able to make some clear proposals in the early stages of the effort, as we introduced in the earlier part of this series of article.
In a networked organization like the JCN, the first step to contributing as a member of the network is to show the positioning of your organization by sharing both your geological operational areas and your areas of expertise. Then cooperation and collaborations among members can start. In that sense, the FAJ's clear proposal about "what they can do" is an example of exercising their membership. Because of the work the FAJ did in both the "A Meetings," which were a series of meetings to prepare proposals by volunteers and NPOs to support recovery from the earthquakes, and "B Meetings," which are regular meetings with volunteers, NPOs and representatives from the ministries of the Japanese government were acknowledged for the value and significance of their participation. This opened the door for the FAJ to extend their support in the periodic meetings in the Field and the Nationwide Evacuee Support Meeting.
However, it was also true that in the beginning the roles people expected the FAJ to play, both in the Periodic Meetings in The Field and the Nationwide Evacuee Support Meeting, were a conventional role of a Master of Ceremonies, which is to conduct these meetings in accordance with the determined timeline and scenario. In addition, the so-called "horizontal connection among organizations" tended to be understood as just a fancy way to hold a business card-exchange meeting. These misconceptions came very close to causing misunderstandings about the role of facilitation and could have dwarfed the scope of what facilitation can do.
To be perfectly frank, this was a time when the FAJ experienced a dilemma: being expected to provide facilitation as a sort of Master of Ceremonies was far distant from the FAJ's inhibitory approach earlier mentioned. Still, this may have been necessary for the FAJ to gain the trust of both the hosts and participants of the meetings - those who were expecting the FAJ to manage the meeting to finish on time without any confusion, and those who expected to be guaranteed enough time to get to know the other participants, so they could grow connections for the future.
In due time, the phase in which the main requirement for the FAJ was to manage the meeting to give participants enough time to exchange information and start creating connection was over, and the next phase for the meetings began. In the new phase, "generation of wisdom through human connection" became the key demand. With this, the importance of the function of facilitation increased. As the character of the meeting evolved in this way, the FAJ's role in the meeting also transitioned to planning and proposing the design of workshops in which people could get together, ask questions of each other, and listen to each other's sharing until abundance began to be woven out of "diversity" or "differences." With this, FAJ's expertise in this area began to be appreciated.
In the end, FAJ's scope of action expanded from "planning the meetings together with the host" to "reflecting on the meeting just concluded and extrapolating to the next meeting." This transition signaled a change in the relationship between FAJ and the JCN from that of a member of the network to that of a partner of the network.
It could be said that at that moment it became possible to be an organization which provides intermediacy for an organization which has been advocating facilitation; in effect, a new possibility opened up for the FAJ to be "intermediate supporting organization".
What is "facilitation" and what is "support?" These are the questions that FAJ members were forced to ask themselves during this period.
Sometimes two Japanese children's songs, "the Sparrow School" and "the Small Fish School*," are used to compare different educational approaches. The Sparrow school's approach is to have everyone sing regardless of whether they want to or not, and it is understood that this approach should be avoided. The same thing can be said of all disaster support attempts. What's required is for supporters to stand beside victims, so that they can sing when they are ready to sing. Put another way, maybe it works for supporters to start singing songs first and while watching, the disaster-stricken people begin wanting to sing too, so that in the end they find themselves singing along with the supporters. In fact, both in Minamisoma and in JCN's activities, this change in engagement happened when the local disaster-stricken people got interested in how members of the FAJ conducted their internal meetings.
Therefore, what is required for supporters is to be able to (metaphorically) play and sing any type of music - not only exercising the ability to adjust keys and tempos, but also to choose or arrange music that fits the occasion. That is, if the supporter can only facilitate the meeting, or can only facilitate dialogues, or has limitations in their skills to "hold the space" (a narrow definition of facilitation) and is not able to do program design, process design and coordination, they won't function well. Facilitators who support in disaster recovery sites may need to develop their all-around facilitation skills.
Although it is often said that "the facilitation uses process, not content," lacking a minimum understanding of the content sometimes impedes the ability to win trust from participants, and in turn prohibits facilitators from even dealing with processes. In "Rebuilding the Local Community and Residents-Oriented Recovery Support," understanding of the contents means the understanding on the local climate such as geographic, historic, and cultural background. In "Enhancing the Network among Supporting Organizations," it is the knowledge about disaster responses, well-being policies, citizens activities and town planning. "Extend the range of education" may sound like a cliché, but persistent efforts to expand the range of understanding of the elements of the situation is necessary, so that you can fully "own" the circumstance and build from there, having facilitation as a center of origin.
That is why we recommend that everyone who is interested in facilitation not only engage in practice facilitations in different discussion styles in order to develop your response ability in the fields you visit, but also that you assume public roles running local organizations in your own area. Without knowing what it is "to engage in local support activities," there is no chance for us to truly "support organizational activities."
There are many things people can do using a facilitation mindset and skills - not only in disaster recovery support but also to solve regional and social issues and problems, thereby creating the future together.