FACILITATION ABROAD: IAF, ToP GLOBAL, AND MORE!

ICA-International (ICAI) and the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) have come together to form a working group consisting of three members/facilitators from each organization. The intent of the group is to explore ways the organizations can collaborate and support one another. Both organizations agree in principle to collaborate in areas of conferences, events, complementary certification, and training endorsements.

The relationship between ICAI and IAF is longstanding and well integrated. From the ICAI side of the group, the members (Larry Philbrook of ICA Taiwan, Eduard Christiansen of ICA Chile and Jane Stallman of the ToP Network in the US) will report back to Martin Gilbraith, ICAI's acting President. Martin has been involved with IAF since 1998, and served a four-year term as a Chair on their board in 2012. Members on the IAF side of the working group will report back to John Cornwell, their Regional Director for Africa, who has worked in the past with ICA in South Africa as well.
 
While the group has only met twice, they have effectively identified the issues and key questions to be addressed by both ICAI and IAF. In the coming months, they will look to implement and uphold their common core values and:

• Launch and follow through on other initiatives that pertain to both groups' work,
• Discover other areas of collaboration, promotion, and research beneficial for both organizations,
• Support each other with materials and individuals when need be, and
• Promote IAF in ICAI courses, and vice versa.

This conversation is one of many going on about strengthening ICA's facilitation and training brand world-wide - the Technology of Participation (ToP). In addition to the IAF-ICAI working group there is also a current Global ToP policy working group that aims to establish internationally recognized ToP trainer competencies and criteria,  build ToP trainer training capacity globally,  develop global ToP resource repositories, and to set up a global ToP co-ordination structure. For more information, contact sgandhi@ica-usa.org.