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This section presents a series of activities that have been tested many times in the field and which comprise important guidelines to ensure a powerful face-to-face training-of-trainers program. The activities of the Training of Trainers follow the field-based, learning-by-doing method of helping new trainers become effective facilitators.

Before the Training of Trainers

While the master trainers who organize the training-of-trainers workshop have plenty of set up work and preparation, the key preparation work for the participants of the ToT is that they read multiple chapters of the Forest Garden Technical Manual. The team or individual that leads the ToT should identify the chapters most applicable to the incoming group of trainees. The first 8 chapters of the Technical Manual form a strong foundation and should all be considered for a pre-reading assignment. Be sure to share the technical manual and selected reading assignments with registered participants well ahead of the scheduled event.

During the Training of Trainers

The following is a description of the standard Forest Garden Training of Trainers agenda conducted over the course of six days.

Day 1

1. What makes a great ToT? (page 39) Start the ToT with a quick brainstorming activity to clarify expectations with attendees on what makes an effective ToT and what they are expected to do that week. (10 min) 2. Rules & Objectives Set ground rules for the workshop in terms of participation, phones, attendance, timeliness, etc. (15 min) 3. What is the Forest Garden Approach and Training Program? Provide an overview of the Forest Garden Approach and Training Program. Trainees should already know much of this before coming to the Training of Trainers. (20 min) 4. Whispers (page 40) Help attendees understand the importance of clear and active communication by facilitating the Whispers activity. (30-45 min) 5. Good Facilitation Skills (page 43 and 45) Help all attendees learn what a facilitator is and the role of a facilitator by facilitating the Tennis Ball Challenge. (30-45 min) 6. 10 Do’s & Don’ts (page 46) Guide the attendees in learning more about the Forest Garden Approach by having them read through the lists of Do’s and Don’ts. Have a new person read each statement and explain it in his or her own words. (20 min) 7. Module 1: Forest Garden Design: In the first day of the workshop, the lead trainer will spend the last couple hours of the day facilitating Module 1: Forest Garden Design. This gives the lead trainers an opportunity to model the exceptional facilitation skills the trainees will be expected to learn and demonstrate. Once the lead trainer has completed the mock delivery of Module 1, demonstrate how feedback will be provided to each of the trainees after they complete their own module. To do this, go around the group and have each person provide some examples of communication and facilitation techniques demonstrated well and those that the facilitator could improve on. 8. Assign modules (page 47). Before the end of the first day, assign each attendee at least one module to prepare to facilitate with the training group. They are expected to prepare and deliver the module they are assigned as it is written in the facilitator’s Guide, though they are allowed to make changes and innovations to either make it better or adjust to time, resource, and other limitations. Attendees can either do this individually or in pairs. Ideally, each trainee would have two opportunities to practice delivering modules over the course of the ToT.

Days 2-6

Over the course of days two through six, depending on the number of trainees, each person should have the opportunity to mock-facilitate at least one module, using the appropriate tools and with the rest of the trainees playing the role of farmers. Find time to integrate the facilitation challenges activity (page 47).

Day 7

Much of the time on the last day should be spent creating Action Plans, collecting evaluation feedback, and making a final plan for the trainees to pass the Forest Garden Trainer Certification examination. In action planning, trainees plan how they will transfer all that they have learned back to their working environment. This process will have begun early on in the week with reflections and planning activities, but the result of this final phase is the creation of specific plans for implementing Forest Garden Training Programs. Also collect contact information and make a plan on how the training group will continue to communicate and learn together from their experiences and challenges.

 

After the Training of Trainers

There are many support activities that lead trainers can do after the training of trainers, but the most important to highlight here is encouraging and supporting the trainees in passing the certification exam within two weeks after the conclusion of the ToT. It will be important for the newly trained facilitators to have on-going support from the project and from their colleagues as they embark on the new journey of establishing Forest Garden training programs. They should be supported with periodic meetings, phone calls, and additional enrichment opportunities such as mini workshops on challenging topics. They will need to have a venue through which their day-to-day challenges can be aired and advised. If the online platform is not meeting their needs, then post-ToT workshops may be required for providing new content, answering tough questions, sharing solutions, and managing the administrative and monitoring needs of the project. Monthly meetings are a good tool for accomplishing this.

Detailed Description of ToT Activities

This section contains full descriptions of 6 activities that are particularly important for the first day of the Training of Trainers.

What makes a great ToT? (15 min)

Rather than simply calling on trainees to shout out their answers, an activity that we commonly do to establish common expectations for the training of trainers workshop is to provide trainees each with multiple pieces of coloured paper. We ask them to write their expectations of the workshop on a piece of paper and tape them on the wall. After everyone has posted their expectations on the wall, the facilitator debriefs the exercise by reading each and grouping them. Common themes such as ‘learn new training methods’ or ‘learn about Forest Gardens’ may frequently appear. The facilitator groups all of the similar expectations together. When there are expectations that are outside the scope of the workshop, the facilitator explains why or why not it aligns with the workshop objectives. Sometimes it is necessary to ask who posted a certain expectation to get clarity on what was intended. Here is an example of a list of ideas this activity generates:

Whispers (45 minutes)

This activity aims to demonstrate:

• the importance of clarity in message delivery and of careful listening • the difference between communication with and without feedback • The importance of asking questions to ensure effective transmission of information from one person to another.

The overall time for this activity depends on the group size. In terms of a venue, any large room or open space under a roof, with enough space to divide participants into multiple rows is sufficient. Preparation One Day Before This Activity

1. On four pieces of paper, write four sentences which are about 30 to 40 words in length. Make up your own sentences.

      Sample sentence: « Dr. Lim will arrive this afternoon at 3:30pm on Singapore airlines with his wife and two sons in order to make a presentation to the Prime Minister about a new cocoa management technology. » Sample sentence: « Mrs. White will arrive from Australia tomorrow as part of a group of U.N. officials who are investigating flood damage to food crops so they can make recommendations about emergency food aid to Vietnam. » Procedure For two large groups of participants.

1. Divide all participants into two equal groups. If there is an odd number of participants, one group can have an extra member.
2. Arrange the chairs. Have one group sit in a row together, and the other group sit in a separate row together. (If you are in a room, each group can sit along a different side of the room. If you are out under the trees, seat each group in a row about five meters away from the other group.) (5 minutes)
3. INSTRUCTIONS for ACTIVITY: Explain the following instructions to everyone. (10 minutes) Introduction. The trainer begins by explaining the following: Many people think it is very easy to understand other people. It is thought that telling something to another person is enough to make that person understand clearly. All I have to do is tell him, and then he will understand. Simple, right? Today we will test just how simple this is, then draw conclusions in our discussion. In order to make this activity really interesting, it is requested that everyone try to carry out the instructions carefully. Please listen and try to follow instructions.

a. During this activity, no one may talk out loud. You may only whisper to the person next to you so that only that person can hear you. No one else in the room should hear (or try to listen to) anything that you say.

b. Take two of the four sentences, and give one sentence to the first person in each of the two groups.

c. The first person in the group must read the sentence SILENTLY. He/she may take a minute to read the sentence several times to make sure he/she is familiar with it, but he/she MAY NOT SPEAK OR READ OUT LOUD!

d. After reading the sentence, the first person whispers the message in the ear of the person next to him/her. That person may ask questions to make sure of the message, but must whisper so no one else can hear.

e. Each person must listen to the message and ask questions, then turn to the person on the other side and whisper the same message to that person, and so on until the last person in the group has been told the message.

f. The last person in the group should write the message on a piece of paper.

g. When both groups are finished whispering the message and the final person in each group has written down the message, ask the final person to read out loud the message which he/she wrote down. Then ask the first person in the group to read the original message. Have everyone compare the two messages, original and final.

 

4. Now repeat this process with the other two sentences, but THIS TIME DO NO ALLOW THE LISTENER TO ASK QUESTIONS. THIS TIME, THE EACH PERSON MAY WHISPER THE MESSAGE JUST ONCE. EACH LISTENER MUST SIMPLY LISTEN ONCE WITHOUT ASKING QUESTIONS, then must tell the next person the message just once, and so on, until the final person is reached.

  Questions for Analysis

• 1. What was the difference in results between the first time and the second time that messages were whispered?
  2. What was the reason for the difference between performance the first time and the second time?
  3. What does that mean about the importance of giving other people the opportunity to ask questions?
  4. Whose understanding is important? the facilitator’s or the trainee’s?
  5. What does that mean about the importance of listening carefully to another person’s questions?
  6. If you know how to do something (like Agro Ecosystem Analysis), do you think it will enable another person to learn how to do it if you just tell that person one time?
  7. What does it mean when the trainee has no questions to ask?
  • a. That the trainee already understands everything?

b. That the trainee understands so little that he or she is embarrassed to reveal his/her lack of understanding?

c. That we simply cannot even tell what it means until we ask some questions?

d. Other?

Facilitation – Tennis balls (45 minutes)

This is a complicated activity which will require some finesse on the part of the lead facilitator. The activity entails slipping the trainees into small groups of five people. Provide each group with three tennis balls and challenging each group to “pass the three balls through the hands of everyone in your group as quickly as possible.” Provide each group with three tennis balls (or other balls, potatoes, mangos, etc). Instruct the group of five people to stand in a circle. Give all three balls to one person. Instruct the person who has the balls to call someone’s name and pass the ball to that person. The second person should call the name of another person and pass the ball to that person, and so on, until all people have caught the ball. After the first person throws the first ball to the second person, he should call the same person’s name again and immediately throw the second ball. The ball must take the same path that the first ball took. Over the course of ten to twenty minutes and several attempts, conduct several rounds of trials where the groups try to “pass the three balls through everyone’s hands as quickly as possible.” Time them using a stop watch or cell phone. Using the way demonstrated in the beginning, they will quickly reach a time they cannot beat without making adjustments to how they stand and how they pass the balls. Try to give groups time to innovate and come up with ways so that they can pass the balls faster while adhering to the challenge of passing the three balls through the hands of everyone in their group as quickly as possible. Once at last one of the groups has figured out how to stand closer, change the order, and/or toss the balls differently to complete the test in less than one or two seconds, conduct a debriefing using the following questions:

• Why did you do it the way you did?
• Was the first way the most effective way to meet the objective?
• What made you change?
• How was change introduced in the group? (propose change)
• How did the group respond to new ideas? (collaborate – innovate)
• What did you do when you broke a record? (celebrate)
• If I told you at the very beginning, when you got 9 seconds, that other groups could do it in less than half the time, how would you have felt?
• Why did the group win?
• What did I do? What was my role? (goals, time keeping, direction, encouragement = facilitator)
• Did I want to give you the answer?
• Would the activity have had the same effect if I had given you the answer in the first minute? (no, need opportunity to innovate, collaborate and celebrate)
• What does this say about how we facilitate Forest Garden training workshops with farmers?
  • Challenge, don’t belittle
  • Innovate: Encourage co-ops to create their own plans and come to their own conclusions, introduce their own plans for change.
  • Collaborate: Resist the urge of giving them every answer – draw answers from the group working together. Minimize lecturing.
  • Celebrate: Give them the opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments. Congratulate them.

 

Good Facilitation Skills (10 minutes)

By the point you have completed the Whispers and Tennis Ball activities, the trainees will begin to have a clear understanding of facilitation, and they will be able to provide some of their own ideas. Conduct a short brainstorming with attendees to flesh out an extensive list of many of the important communication and facilitation skills. The following list is a good example of what the training group should create:  

10 DOs and DON’Ts of Forest Garden Training Programs (20 min)

This is an easy activity. Have each trainee read one sentence and explain the significance in his or her own words.

1. DO work together with farmers in a spirit of cooperation.
2. DO learn the name of each farmer in your workshop.
3. DO prepare the workshop in advance, making sure you have all the materials you need and flipcharts materials, handouts, etc are all prepared.
4. DO question farmers persistently to try to get them to draw conclusions from their activities. Then question them more about why they drew such conclusions. Your job is to get farmers to think about their experiences and to help them to learn how to draw conclusions and innovate solutions from those observations and experiences.
5. DO ask questions, and then ask more questions, and then ask even more questions, to find out what the trainees really need and really think and why.
6. DON’T lecture to farmers. They will forget what you say, but they will not forget activities which he himself or she herself has done. Facilitators should not act like university professors.
7. DO resist the urge to provide farmers with immediate answers to their questions. Always give them the chance to figure out an answer to their own questions by themselves before you help them with information. You will often find that someone in the group knows the answer!
8. DON’T steal a farmer’s opportunity to figure out an answer by himself/herself.
9. DO engage in activities with trainees in a spirit of mutual inquiry. Even the most experienced technical facilitator will learn from group members throughout the workshops. Try to help group leaders strategize a plan that is optimal for their specific group.
10. DON’T assume you already know all the answers to questions, or that you know all that there is to know about the group as they are complex and always have something to teach us.
11. DON’T be afraid to admit that you do not know all the answers. Your job is to help the group leaders (not you yourself) to become the authority for his/her own group.
12. DO make an effort to find out answers and bring them to the next workshop.
13. DO make sure every trainee participates in every activity. S/he will not learn by listening, and will not learn even by watching. S/he WILL learn by practicing every skill.
14. DO time workshops to coincide with group calendars. Technical training should be delivered just before farmers need to use the skills in the field. Marketing is best delivered before the start of the growing season.
15. DON’T expect the farmer to remember a skill which they learned at the wrong time of the year, and apply it correctly six months later. Agricultural techniques and skills must be delivered at the time of the year when they should be used, because people forget a skill which they do not use right away.
16. DO respect farmer’s fields by being careful not to damage their farm. Be extra conscious of preventing the spread of disease vectors when visiting fields as groups.
17. DO SMILE. Farmers perform better if they think you are happy.

 

Facilitation Challenges

Assign everyone in your group a role and create a short 2-3 minute role play showing how facilitators should deal with the following situations:

1. Part way through an important exercise, some farmers say they must leave to attend to other matters?
2. A couple farmers are late all the time and the other group members are irritated?
3. One team member is quiet and not participating in team discussions?
4. The more articulate and better dressed male farmer is over enthusiastic and dominates the discussions; he often interrupts the other farmers when they are speaking?
5. One team member is frequently giving negative criticism in team discussions?
6. One of your team members accuses another of making an offensive remark and refuses to work with that person?

 

Mock Facilitation Feedback

The most critical part of the Training of Trainers is for each participant to have at least one opportunity to practice delivering a module in front of the group. Assign at least one module to each trainee (you can also combine them in pairs), and give them a 90 minute or two hour window during the workshop to do the mock delivery. They are responsible for collecting the proper tools required for their workshop or finding a way to improvise using whatever materials are available. Instruct the trainees that though the module they are assigned may require 4 hours to complete with farmers, they must manage their time and even exclude an activity or two in order to complete the mock delivery in the time allocated. After each person has facilitated his or her assigned module, have everyone in the group provide feedback to the facilitator, commenting on things he or she did well and things they can improve upon. After doing this same type of process with every trainee throughout the week of the Training of Trainers, the group will codify a defined set of best practices resembling the list on page 86 that they expect to see in their colleagues.

Facilitation Style Survey

In the pages that follow, twelve scenarios are described along with four ways of responding. Take 5 minutes to answer these questions and learn more about your preferred facilitation style. You are invited to rank these options in terms of your view of their effectiveness:

• 4 points = most effective,
• 3 points = second most effective,
• 2 points = second least effective,
• 1 point = least effective.

Once you have made your assessment of the various situations please turn to page x for information on how to score and interpret your results.

1. You are starting work with a new farmer group. In your interactions with them so far they have been enthusiastic and seem to have some prior knowledge of sustainable farming techniques. You are excited to start work with them. To determine which Forest Garden modules will be most relevant to them, you: a. Rely on your experience and expertise to create the right order and set of modules that you will deliver for the farmer group. b. Leverage the data you have gathered during your conversations with them to create a sequence and then invite the farmer group to provide input. c. Provide the farmers with an overview of the program and the recommended sequence, and then invite them to create the training calendar with your guidance. d. Facilitate a discussion on the key challenges the farmers are facing, and their vision for their own Forest Garden, enabling them to build out the program sequence and modules.
2. You are introducing a new agroforestry technique to your farmer group. The group is committed to the program, and keen to learn and apply the knowledge to their own fields. To help them learn, you: a. Demonstrate the technique to the group and have them practice it, leveraging your knowledge of local context to adapt it to their needs. b. Teach the group the new technique, making sure they have adequate time to practice and get their questions and concerns answered. c. Set-up small learning groups led by farmers who have some prior experience with the technique, and you provide supervision and advice at key junctures. d. Create small groups that work through open-ended questions to discover how the technique works, relying on you and the more knowledgeable members in the group as needed.
3. The farmer group you are working with is struggling to set up their own tree nurseries. The training sessions where they learned to do this seemed to have gone well. However, during site visits you and the lead farmer discover that members are having a hard time recalling the sequence of steps and applying it in their own farms. You set up a follow-up session where you: a. Go over the steps and techniques once again, so members have a chance to learn the details they may have missed the first time. b. Outline key steps and spend time answering the questions and concerns the farmers have. c. Ask questions to uncover the challenges, and then provide guidance as the group identifies steps to overcome these issues. d. Facilitate a dialogue to help the group identify their challenges and generate solutions.
4. After one of the sessions, the group breaks into an informal discussion. One of the members wants more information on a new concepts that was covered. You: a. Welcome the question, and are happy to share additional information and expertise that the entire group will benefit from. b. Provide the answer, inviting others to share their input once you have covered key pieces of information. c. Invite others in the group to answer the question, and add elements they may have missed at the end. d. Invite others in the group to share their perspective. You use open-ended questions to help the group discover elements they may have missed in their responses.
5. For the last few sessions, the farmer group you are working with has been struggling with engagement. In fact, a few of the members failed to attend the last two sessions despite reminders from the lead farmer. You start the next session by: a. Reviewing the Memorandum of Understanding, and how important it is for the group to honor it for their continued participation in the program. b. Reminding them of the benefits of the Forest Garden program, its potential to change their lives, and inviting farmers to share their success stories. c. Sharing your concerns, and leading a discussion with the farmers to understand what is impacting their engagement and how you can help. d.Facilitating a dialogue where farmers evaluate what is going well with the program, what could be working better, and what can be done collectively to improve the usefulness of the program.
6. While the group overall seems to be doing well, one of the farmers is struggling. She rarely asks questions during group discussions and has not completed the follow-up activities. You believe she has the ability to achieve her Forest Garden goals and to help her get back on track you: a. Inform her of your concern and let her know that the lead farmer will be providing her additional support to help her catch up with the group. b. Meet with her one-on-one to outline several options, and ask her to select her preferred way forward. c. Seek her commitment to the overall Forest Garden objectives, and ask questions to help her figure out her next steps. d. Review her Forest Garden dream field and design with her, so she can evaluate the progress she has made and determine if she needs any additional support.
7. You are in year two of your Forest Garden program and want to assess the effectiveness of the program so far. You: a. Gather data and information from farmers to determine how the program is going, and identify the changes you would like to make. b. Make an initial assessment based on your observations, and then share it with farmers so they can provide their input. c. Share your goal of assessing program effectiveness with the farmers, and work with them to identify the best way to do so. d. Conduct a group dialogue to collectively assess progress and actions, and rely on the group to support ongoing assessment activities.
8. You are having challenges with one of the farmers during the sessions – he frequently voices concerns about the Forest Garden program, interrupts other members, and is sharing stories that go against program principles. You: a. Let him know that if his behavior continues he will have to leave the group, you don’t want anything to impact overall group progress. b. You meet with him to share a few different ways he can support group learning, and seek his commitment towards engaging differently. c. Share your concerns with him, explore what is driving his resistance, and ask him to identify how you can help. d. Let him know the impact his behavior is having on the group, and ask him to identify his key concerns and the steps he wants to take to address them.
9. You are introducing a new Forest Garden concept to your farmer group. The group is usually enthusiastic about new steps in the program. However, you sense their hesitance towards the new ideas you are covering with them today. You: a. Try a different way of teaching the concepts so the group can grasp how critical they are. b. Explain how this new set of techniques will help them meet their personal goals, and ask for input on how they can apply these new ideas. c. Outline the overall goals and thinking behind the techniques, and ask the group to generate localized alternatives that would still meet the objective. d. Ask the group to link the new techniques to the challenges they face, and identify how they would like to integrate them with their farming practices.
10. Some members of the group have specifically asked you for additional support on one of the agroforestry topics. The farming practice is new to the group, and they need more help in applying these to their fields. You: a. Setup a dedicated session where you and the lead farmer can work with them in smaller groups to go over the topic again. b. Ask the group to outline a few options that would help them move forward, and then work with the lead farmer to implement your support plan for them. c. Ask questions to help the group get a better understanding of their pain points, and generate solutions. working with the lead farmer to provide guidance and support as needed. d. Invite the members seeking additional support to join farmers who have had early successes for a dialogue. where the group can collectively identify challenges, creative ideas on how to overcome them, and ways they can support each other.

                             

How to interpret your score

  The styles for which you gave higher scores suggest a degree of comfort or habit with perceiving those styles as appropriate. The styles for which you gave lower scores imply a lack of enthusiasm for judging them to be useful. Style preference: If your score for one style stands out higher than the others you can consider yourself in possession of a preferred style. This is the style that you are likely to believe is the most useful to use. This is your « default » style – the one you jump to out of habit or when under stress. Depending on the context (nature of the task, group maturity), however, another approach may be more appropriate. The higher this score is in relation to the others, the greater the intensity of your preference for this style.               Scores at the lower end of the range suggest a tendency for avoiding a particular style when facilitating. Very high or low positions may also be saying something about the situation: it could be that characteristics of the specific group you are working with or cultural factors encourage high or low use of a particular style. There is also the possibility that your own habits of thinking enable you to rely more or less on some styles than appropriate. Flexibility: Fairly even scores across the styles suggest a degree of flexibility in interpreting situations. Flexibility of perception and interpretation is a sturdy springboard for flexibility of behavioral style. The opposite is also true – an uneven distribution of scores can mean a bias towards narrowly framing the needs of a coaching situation. This could limit your options when taking part in a coaching conversation. No ‘one size fits all’ solution for all situations: While change management research and qualitative reports from participatory facilitation approaches recommend the catalyst style as more likely to achieve long term results – variations in the purpose, context, and participants make it necessary for the facilitator to identify when a particular facilitation style is most appropriate.