isaster! Are you ready?　The Perspective from Facilitation.

1. How can you face an emergency in the here and now?

Question:

It's Sunday at 2 pm. You are at home, and you encounter a very strong earthquake of seismic intensity 7. What would your immediate actions be? Please imagine how you spend the entire day. Please imagine what kind of difficulties or confusion could be happening around you.

Key words.

Safety confirmation

First three days

First seven days

Shelter

Home evacuation

Various shortages

The top priority immediately following the disaster is protecting your life. You will experience unprecedented confusion in terms of the situation of the people around you, traffic, information flow, etc. You must surmount these situations in cooperation with the people around you. Sometimes you may be required to make immediate decisions without much time to think. Your routine actions tend to come out unconsciously. How could we act as a citizen with a facilitation mind even in this situation, drawing on other people's potentials to overcome this disaster together? Let's think how we, as people who study and practice facilitation skills, can act in this situation.

2. Each community has its own abilities and potentiality to support each other

Question:

Please count the number of the organizations and groups you are related to.

Yourself

Work

Relatives

Hobby

Concerns

Community

NPO

Circle

Although normally people do a safety check right after the disaster with their family or friends, the varied groups and organizations you belong to can be a very important place for you to connect to help each other. If each person has several of these community networks, they may overlap sometimes; this is actually beneficial because it decreases the number of loners. Facilitation lives everyplace people get together.

3. Let's comprehend characteristics of people's mental and physical response in earthquake disaster

In the wake of a severe natural disaster, how could we act as an individual, a member of the community, and/or a member of corporation or organization - and with what kind of knowledge - so that we could reduce the damage as much as possible?

In the next few pages, we would like to speculate possible responses, especially from the viewpoint of facilitation, based on our experience of providing reconstruction assistance through facilitation.

Question:

What mental and physical changes do you think a human being might experience after an earthquake disaster? Please imagine.

In earthquake disasters, each individual will experience unimaginable traumas. But it's not only that the victims of the natural disaster generally get confronted with a difficult environment after the earthquake: People die or get injured. People lose property and belongings important to them. Conflicts or separation happen. Many people fall into poverty due to the deterioration of economic situations. It is important for us to know in advance what can happen to human beings in these situations, both mentally and physically. People's responses to traumatic stress are different. For some it is obvious, for others it is not expressed, for some, reactions are situation-dependent. Please use the following as your clues for understanding others and devising how to work with them.

Victim's reactions over time.

Responses/Period	Acute Period: Immediately after the disaster up to few days later	Reaction Period: 1 to 6 weeks	Rehabilitation Period: 1 month to 6 months
Physical	Increase in heart rate faster breathing rise in blood pressure sweating and trembling dizziness or fainting	headache backache accumulation of fatigue nightmares and sleep disorders	The same as the reaction period but decreased in intensity
Mental	difficult to think rationally Thinking narrowly decreased focus decreased memory decreased ability to judge	come to realize one's own severe circumstances.	Begin to think on their own.
Emotional	stunned fear sadness anger	sadness and emotional pain frequent triggering of fear depression, sense of loss guilt exhilaration	sadness loneliness anxiety
Actions	get annoyed restlessness rigidity blame decreased ability to communicate	being afraid to go back to the afflicted areas increased alcohol intake	avoid coming near the afflicted areas
Main Features	fight/flight response	emerging of the suppressed emotions	Being able to think about daily lives and future. Flashbacks and memories of the disaster cause pain.

Source: "Mental Care of the Victims," Japan Red Cross Society

4. Let's briefly review and discuss an overview of the entire process, from a few hours to a few years after the disaster.

Question: What types of conversations are necessary, and at what stage, in the disaster areas?

Recovery from a disaster is a process that happens over one, three, ten or even twenty years. It includes many discussions, conversations, talks, and dialogues and the formation of empathy, understanding and consensus. It is important to be aware of the need to design the process knowing that it takes place over years. It is also important to be aware of the various stakeholders at each stage. When it comes to people from different organizations and cultures getting together to do something, the role of facilitating collaborations becomes important.

5. Let's Get to Know People's Current Reaction to the Words "Facilitation" and "Facilitators"

Question:

What is your assessment of the level of recognition of the words "facilitation" and "facilitation" in the disaster-stricken areas?

We heard from people in the disaster-stricken areas say "this is my first time to hear the word facilitation, "or "My first time to see facilitators." This is because a number of supporting organizations were hosting various other types of workshops back then.

Let us introduce you to some of the questions and complaints about facilitators we heard during that time. Try to listen to people's situations in the background and think about what you would have done differently if you were the facilitator in that meeting.

People's voices regarding facilitators at the disaster sites.

●What is a facilitator? They didn't give us an understandable explanation of the role of facilitators.

●Lots of foreign words, strange words are used.

●They always ask me to write something on the "Post It" and that is the reason I don't want to participate in because I am not good at writing.

●They just did the workshops and I don't understand what would develop from them.

●Facilitators don't know how things worked or the background of our region before the earthquake.

●Facilitators always come from outside. I would rather develop people from inside as facilitators.

15 pivotal areas and themes for recovery from disaster

Source:

"15 Chapters for Living Rehabilitation: Eastern Japan Great Earthquake Living Rehabilitation Project Report" by Hyogo Earthquake Memorial 21st Century Research Institute

<Life, Sense of Worthy Life, Health>

Chapter 1 Life and Reason to Live

Chapter 2 Health Promotion

Chapter 3 Regional Inclusive Care and Development

Chapter 4 How to Build a Hangout Area for Parents and Children, Children, and Youth

Chapter 5 Recovery from Traumatic Shock and Support for Life Rehabilitation

<Where You Live>

Chapter 6 Where They Live Currently

Chapter 7 Moving to Permanent Houses

Chapter 8 How to Support Evacuees in Outlying Areas and Fukushima-Specific Issues.

<Works>

Chapter 9 Recovery of Agriculture and Forestry industries.

Chapter 10 Creating New Jobs

<Towns>

Chapter 11 Rebuilding Commercial and Residential Areas

Chapter 12 How Town-Building Works

Chapter 13 Youth and Children as Vital Members for Town Building

<Learnings and Collaborations>

Chapter 14 Lessons and Practical Activities

Chapter 15 Collaboration between Private and Administrative Sectors

A column to fill in your ideas on how to formulate consensus on recovery and rebuilding towns.

Step 1: Getting agreement on how to proceed with the consultation

Step 2: Explaining the main policies from the recovery and reconstruction plan

Step 3: Determining the recovery and reconstruction policy with Disaster Victims

Step 4: Grasping the victims' hopes and opinions on town building.

Step 5: Setting out "the basic policy on how to build our town" with victims.

Step 6: Presenting rough estimates to build houses.

Step 7: Having them choose the way to build houses.

Step 8: Making a plan for building the town and discussing it with the victims.

Step 9: Revising the plan of building the town based on the discussion with the victims.

Step 10: Repeating the process of discussions and revisions to complete the plan for building the town.

Source:

"The Guide on How to Formulate Consensus for Disaster-Stricken Municipalities" by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Urban and Housing Bureaus.

Image of the disaster areas and their reconstruction.

Facilitations in Disaster Areas Support and Reconstruction Assistance

In the earthquake and tsunami-stricken areas, people's lives, property and connections were destroyed in unexpected ways. Because of this, people's views, values and sensitivity became even more diverse compared to before the disaster. There are some elements we need be even more sensitive to in this type of situation.

Numbers 1 through 4 in the following diagram are what the FAJ suggests are required skills for facilitators in general meetings.

(1) Skill in designing the meeting space (to create the conversational spaces and connect people in the meeting)

(2) Skill of relatedness (to accept and draw out what people think)

(3) Skill of structuring the meeting (to engage and organize points of discussion)

(4) Skill of building consensus (to summarize and share)

We added three more elements as tips to make facilitation work in the disaster areas.

・Skill with dialogue (to be able to actively receive people's diverse experiences and values while continuing to trust each one of them until a foundation of trust is built among them.)

・Skill in Process design for short and long term (to be able to build the design from each dialogue or meeting to the entire recovery process over years)

・Skill in having people come up with possible future actions (to be able to create occasions for future leaders to emerge through sharing experiences and emotions related to the earthquakes)

Facilitative Actions for Reconstruction and the Future

After the disaster, common knowledge reflected throughout various organizations was that "Things you cannot do in your normal life, you cannot do in disaster and/or recovery."

Because of this, we suggest the following four items so that we can best take advantage of this moment to prepare for the future.

1. Create a small dialogue space in your neighborhood so that people can grow to build trust with each other.
2. Take time to practice facilitation in your daily life in your local area.
3. Get to know and participate in at least three activities or organizations in your local area for different social/local themes.
4. Create occasions to attend something outside of your normal activities and concerns. Use the occasion to reflect on your behaviors and actions.

From the Advisor to the FAJ Disaster Recovery Support Section

The Disaster Recovery Section has been honored to be supported by advisors from FAJ members who are experienced facilitators in various fields or had experienced supporting the recovery of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster. We would like to introduce their comments to you.

Valuable report about the shift from "support" to "co-creation." Takatoshi Ikeda

The report in this booklet covers the entirety of the hard work and outcomes of real facilitators who had to sincerely confront the question "What can facilitation do?" As the disaster sites involve not only the local residents but also people and organizations from outside, it becomes more important to keep your eyes on the issues that may affect the long-distant future as well as handling day-to-day immediate recovery issues. I believe that it was the attitude of the Disaster Recovery Section in "co-creating" the mindset for the new future, not just giving one-way "support" that attracted people's hearts.

Facilitation will be expanding Yukiko Kuroda

It is often said that disaster recovery is not actually going back to how it was but to have things evolve. I expect that those who learned about facilitation may practice their newly learned skills of facilitation, then facilitation may be utilized in their community-building efforts after the disaster recovery or even in the management of various organizations. I believe this ripple effect is one of the charms of facilitation.

What is Required in Facilitation Osamu Nishi

Activities to build towns are dependent on the local cultures. While each local area has its own manner of consensus building, in most proposals and support activities rendered in the East Japan area for the recovery from the disaster, it looks to me as if people here have been forced to take new approaches. It usually takes huge amounts of energy and time for a new culture to be accepted. But these new seeds were already sewn. It was not just a few local people who were inspired by these new "manners." What was then required was for the facilitators to respond to this new move and bring forth the seeds of new social comportments by continuing to walk with the local people in the disaster areas, with sincerity and care.

Facilitation for getting it done thoroughly Takayuki Karube

What's behind this report is not the idea of "doing it right" effectively for the quickest possible recovery, but rather, "doing it thoroughly" in a more sustainable, sincere, and honest manner to meet the local people's needs without resisting any need for long-term processes.

Without being rushed, without being impatient, and never giving in to resignation, the gentle space and time to be with disaster victims kept being generated. This is what opened up the local people's silent mouths and hearts to finally share their thoughts and emotions, which had long been suppressed. It made it possible to generate empathy upon which the real connection amongst people is generated. The rigid discipline of the Disaster Recovery Support Section of the FAJ did a superb job.

Give positive shape to people's heart and energy Tamio Nakano

Faced with a conundrum, people need to talk. Even in situations where people's various interests and sentiments conflict with one another, there must be some way of talking which enables us to be in communication and generate creative outcomes. The disaster recovery support provided by the FAJ never skipped the process of careful relationship-building and preparation, flexible handling in the real meetings, and the follow-through after the meeting. They were also deliberate about when to retreat from the center stage. This is how the FAJ fosters independence of people in the disaster areas and leaves them in the strong network of supporters and supporting organizations. Readers will be surprised, saying "I never knew this kind of support was possible." I believe this excellent work demonstrated the power of facilitation at this historic moment and can now be seen for what it can provide n the future.

Facilitators connect people in a new way Kimitoshi Hori

This report gave me another chance to fully realize that the essential role of a facilitator in disaster recovery is to "reconnect" people. In order for a community which has lost the connection between their people to take a step to regenerate itself, the people must first start by sharing thoughts and feelings they had not disclosed. Even among supporting organizations which share the same goal of disaster recovery, there is no guarantee that their meetings will produce actual results. These are a few examples of places where the real value of facilitators is demonstrated.

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