E-mail: admin@facilitatingourselves.com

Write: facilitating ourselves
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facilitating ourselves is a new format for community building originated by CBiB facilitator, Mike Roth. Mike wanted to expand on the standard 2 or 3 day community building event to create a six day experience exploring in depth the attempt to build true community. facilitating ourselves, by its very name, poses the additional challenge of building a group of all leaders.

Scott Peck asserted in The Different Drum that  “When I am the designated leader I have found that once a group becomes a community, my nominal job is over.” Building a group of all leaders, then, is inherent in community building. The challenge posed by facilitating ourselves is to build community as a group of all leaders? How can this work? Can we facilitate and participate?


Scott Peck gives some clues to the process: “Traditional hierarchical patterns have to be at least temporarily set aside. Some kind of control must be relinquished. For it is a situation in which it is the spirit of community itself that leads and not any single individual.” Read here about the format for facilitating ourselves  which reflects this challenge.

The historyof facilitating ourselves begins with the first pilot event held in Wales in 2003, where the adventure of meeting the challenge was taken up by thirty pioneers! For me, this was indeed challenging, but also exciting, exhilarating and rewarding. I have been on this journey of discovery since; attending the four facilitating ourselves events that have followed. You might like to attendees comments on the outcomes of facilitating ourselves events - how it was for them.


We are now facing the challenge of organising future events. The balance of facilitation and participation seems to have profound implications for life in general. How? Why? Perhaps you will join us in this voyage of discovery?

facilitatingourselves

short introduction