Barefoot Guide to Organisations and Social Change – Week Long course running for the first time in in the UK

We are now accepting bookings for our week-long course based on the well-known Barefoot Guide to Organisations and Social Change (www.barefootguide.org) which will be held at Roots & Shoots a venue near Waterloo in Central London on 8^th-12^th September 2014.

This is the first time that this course is being run in the UK – not to be missed!  The course has been described by a friend and colleague as a ‘spa for development workers’ – not because it’s all about relaxation but because the Barefoot guide takes account of the need for us, as practitioners to approach development from the inside out – creating an understanding that in order to facilitate change we must be consciously engaged in our own development.

The course will cover:

1. Asking and working with the right questions

2. Knowing yourself in order to know others

3. Listening with head, heart and feet

4. Understanding organisations

5. Working with different kinds of change

6. Embedding learning in your practice

This is an opportunity to deepen your development practice and give you a better understanding of how you can support people, organisations and communities to develop and cope with change.  The course will enable participants to:

• listen deeply to others so that they can better understand their needs, motives and experience
• understand more about how their own temperament and behaviour can affect the people they work with
• learn from their own experience and enable others to do the same
• identify the stage an organisation is at and relevant interventions to support effective change at that stage
• assess what kind of change is happening in a community or organisation and how it can best be supported
• learn how to address resistance to change
• develop facilitation techniques to initiate and support positive change

The course is experiential and participants will be able to explore how they can use the Barefoot Guide in their work with their own and other organisations, using a variety of media and practices.  It is suitable for anyone who is working on change and development within their own organisation or who is trying to build the capacity of other organisations or communities and who wants to develop their skills and refresh their practice.

The facilitators will be Tracey Martin, who has worked in development with VSO and EveryChild for 18 years, is a poet and was involved in the development and writing of two Barefoot Guide and is currently co-developing a third, and Mary Ann Mhina, whose website Partnership Matters, explores many of the issues that are covered in the course, has 15 years of development experience working with BasicNeeds, AbleChildAfrica and as a freelancer specialising in women and development and is also a writer and story-teller.

The cost of the course is £500 including all materials and lunch and refreshments all week.  It will last the whole week but we may agree to finish early in Friday!

To book please send an email to maryannmhina@gmail.com letting us know your name, organisation and contact details and we will get back to you with an invoice.  We need to receive payment in order to secure your place and we expect this course to be very popular so do book soon if you know that you are interested.