..the Polykala team really understand the environment in which we work
Leah Lonsdale – Education Manager, Carers Victoria
We are proud to have partnered with Carers Victoria over the past three years in delivering Diversity & Inclusion training to their entire staff and, more recently, the Art of Facilitation training to their experienced and passionate education team.
Carers Victoria is the leading body for carers and caring families in Victoria – providing advocacy, services and training for carers and caring families. Creative facilitation and engaging education are integral to their work.
Polykala delivered the Art of Facilitation training with the education team at Carers Victoria over two virtual sessions. The intimate group of 10 participants brought a wealth of experience in the education and not-for-profit sectors. The program was custom-designed to fit the needs of the experienced education team and covered:
- Distinguishing between Teaching, Training and Facilitation
- Building a strong ‘Holding Environment for participants to learn and grow
- Facilitation Microskills
- Facilitating online (using Zoom and Miro collaborative whiteboards)
- Managing difficult group dynamics
- Facilitation design
- Our personal tendencies as facilitators
- Facilitating meetings
- Collaborative decision making
The sessions were delivered entirely online, making use of breakout rooms for small group discussions to bring out the existing knowledge within the participant group.
With the event of Covid-19, facilitating and educating online has become commonplace for a number of organisations, forcing experienced teachers to reskill to the online environment. At Polykala, we’ve certainly experienced the stages of grief but ultimately have concluded that creating learning environments online is not only possible but can (at time) be exceptional.
“Carers Victoria hired Polykala to deliver Facilitator training to our team because they offer value for money, excellent quality training and the Polykala team really understand the environment in which we work. Because our team are already qualified educators it was important to us that this training would help the team take their facilitation skills to the next level. Polykala really delivered – everyone really appreciated the training.” Leah Lonsdale – Education Manager, Carers Victoria