Facilitative disaster and crisis intervention - train your teams as a resource in your community. Contact GFSC at info@globalfacilitators.org

1. Facilitative Disaster
& Crisis Intervention
Building Community
Resilience and Self-Reliance
Initially presented to Gilbert Brenson-Lazan
IAF-Asia Conference Timothy Karpoff
30 August, 2009 Marieann Shovlin
Global Facilitator Service Corps, Inc. © 2009. All rights reserved.

2. GFSC provides mentoring, methods, and
materials to strengthen community
resilience in times of crisis and change.
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Global Facilitator Service Corps, Inc. © 2007
2009

3. Rebuilding Social Networks
What is important:
• After a community crisis, rebuilding social networks
is as critical as rebuilding the physical environment.
• Building a sense of community is as important as
helping individuals build their own lives.
• Building group resilience is as important as building
individual resilience.
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Global Facilitator Service Corps, Inc. © 2009

4. Local Resources…
• Group facilitators—and all those who help build a
community—are an untapped resource in
responding to crisis.
• Teachers, doctors, pastors, social workers,
community elders, and others—all can help
rebuild social networks.
• Facilitators have important core skills—and they
need additional skills for crisis situations.
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Global Facilitator Service Corps, Inc. © 2009

5. Strengthening Local Capacity
• Local communities retain capacity to respond to
crisis—and local leaders & facilitators are in best
suited to help strengthen this capacity.
• Outsiders have very limited ability to help rebuild
social networks.
• Outsiders can create a dependence mindset in
others—and a rescue mindset in themselves.
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Global Facilitator Service Corps, Inc. © 2009

6. Everything can
be taken away
from a person, except one thing:
the freedom to choose an attitude
in any given situation.
Man’s Search for Meaning
by Viktor Frankl
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Global Facilitator Service Corps, Inc. © 2009

7. How GFSC Can Help
GFSC has a model that helps facilitators think and
act effectively:
• It is based on a social learning
• To help groups and communities build resilience
and move through crisis to rebuilding and
recovery; and
• To work alongside and to continue after the work
of other crisis intervention organizations.
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Global Facilitator Service Corps, Inc. © 2009

8. DeLors Social Learning Model
Group-based,
experiential
Living and
Living and
working
working
Learn New skills
and ways
together
together
to to live
Develop as Jacques DeLors
a person 1999
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Global Facilitator Service Corps, Inc. © 2007

9. Key Points of GFSC
Crisis to Resilience Model
• Crisis > Change > Choice
• Learning as a community
• Understanding effective and ineffective
behaviors
• Applying effective leadership styles
• Caring for ourselves as we care for others
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Global Facilitator Service Corps, Inc. © 2009

10. Crisis
A symbol for crisis
comprised of
“danger”
and
“opportunity”
• present in every
change/transition
• reactions are normal,
natural
and necessary
• never takes away the
ability to make
choices
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Global Facilitator Service Corps, Inc. © 2009

11. What is Resilience?
• The ability to face internal or external crisis and not only
effectively resolve it but also learn from it, be strengthened by it
and emerge transformed by it, both individually and as a group
(Brenson-Lazan, 2003).
• Resilience requires:
 Personal Development
 Interpersonal Development
 Vision
 Strategic Thinking
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12. Building Resilience
Crisis > Change > Choice
Resilient,
• Physical Self-Reliant
• Psychological Community
• Social
• Spiritual
External OPPORTUNITY
Crisis
?
INITIAL REACTIONS
> &
DENIAL >
Internal
DANGER
• Existence
• Significance
• Options
• Resources Unintended
Consequences
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13. Building Community Resilience:
Stages and Strategies Resilient,
Self-reliant
s Community
tra tegie Associate
t ive S
Effec Activate
Assimilate
Accommodate
Recovery
Stages/Needs Survival Security Autonomy Community
Social Climate/
Behaviors Reactive Receptive Proactive Interactive
Avoid
Abdicate
Ineff Automate
ectiv
e Str
ateg Alienate
ies
Unintended
Consequences
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14. GFSC Global Applications
• Medical personal in Taiwan Earthquake
• Profesional Facilitators after Hurricane Katrina
• Community Groups in Australian Fires
• Refugee Shelters after a Colombian town was buried.
• Educators after Landslide in Vargas City, Venezuela
• Social Workers after Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua
• First Responders in Los Angeles, California
• Typhoon Morakot, Taiwan
14

15. Contact GFSC
www.globalfacilitators.org
info@globalfacilitators.org
All rights reserved.
Global Facilitator Service Corps, Inc. © 2009