Intersol/Community Engagement

Community Engagement
We use an inclusive, highly-participatory approach to support community engagement, effective collaboration and action learning and scalable and sustainable project implementation. We use a blended approach to facilitation, using online and in-person interventions where appropriate.

Our interventions are grounded in practical, work-related projects, to accelerate transfer of knowledge and skills into practice. By weaving skills proficiency with real-time community engagement, our approach consolidates performance improvement of personnel, reducing administration while enhancing measurable results.

We use an organization development approach to build effective communities, and stakeholder buy-in, ownership and pride, which integrates communications, action research and relationship-building and networking.

We leverage our partnership with WikiEducator and the International Centre for Open Education / Open Education Resource Foundation in New Zealand, to build national and international profile and recognition and strategic partnerships.

Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, California, USA

 * Facilitating community engagement, learning and performance for National Repository of Online Courses project

OER Africa (South Africa Institute of Distance Education (SAIDE), South Africa,

 * Conducting a review of a redesigned website for stakeholder/community engagement. ease of navigation and general appeal.

International Centre for Open Education / Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation, New Zealand

 * Senior Consultant, Organization & Business Development

Commonwealth Youth Programme, Regional Centre for Africa, Lusaka, Zambia

 * Facilitating the development of OERs and a peacebuilding social network for African youth (Youth4Peace). Coaching a local rapporteur to build organizational capacity. Developing an orientation manual, contributors' guide, reporting guidelines and monitoring and evaluation framework, and 2-day workshop.

University of British Columbia, Learning Exchange (Community Service Learning), Vancouver, BC

 * Leadership coaching and workshop planning for an online web portal / community of practice for project leaders, faculty, students and partner NGOs in community service learning.

(1) WikiEducator - Strategist, Facilitator & Community-Builder
Supported 5 Education Specialists with change management, stakeholder engagement and organization development activities.

(Reporting to Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D., Education Specialist, E-Learning & ICT Policy, COL)


 * Elected Member of WikiEd's 1st Community Council - Randy Fisher's Campaign Page)
 * Change / transition management for Building Sustainable Projects, Communities & Networks.
 * Developed cluster strategy for networking ODL & ICTs for Development and Pilot Projects. Facilitated strategic partnerships.
 * Facilitated development of clusters including: Community Media, WikiGovernance, Open Education for Schools, Culinary Education. Community Service Learning/Community Leadership, Storytelling, Centre of Education for Open Education Professional Development, Corporate Social Responsibility
 * Facilitated Learning communities for Learning4Content initiative funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
 * Co-facilitated 10-day L4C online workshops for Mediawiki editing skills. (L4C1, eL4C1, eL4C2-COL-UNESCO Workshop, eL4C12).
 * Co-developed,-revised and facilitated L4C-Advance Workshop (5-day online workshop) with Leigh Blackall, of NZ.
 * Designed community-building activities for FLOSS4Edu workshop in NZ (focusing on wiki-training and Open Educational Resources (OERs).
 * Provided planning support to Heywire8 Conference in NZ.
 * Assisted in developing WikiEducator's Skills Certification Program.
 * Co-developed WikiNeighbour & WikiBuddy concepts & resource pages - with Wayne Mackintosh).
 * Conducted community needs analysis and facilitated community development, wiki-engagement, linkages with strategic partners.
 * Attended the 1st (WikiEducator) Tectonic Shift Think Tank meeting at the Commonwealth of Learning, in Vancouver to discuss the future of WikiEducator and free educational content.
 * Co-developed the WikiPublishing model, Value Proposition, FAQs and Pilot Projects pages.
 * Coordinating global project teams for developing bid proposals for (e.g., participatory learning, community development and community service / leadership, capacity building)
 * Co-developing Open Philanthropy Brief.

(2) Community Media / Community Radio & Public Health (HIV/AIDS)
(Reporting to Ian Pringle, Education Specialist, Media, COL)

'''Organizational and programming development for community media / radio stations and public health communities; facilitating the startup of wiki-related actions as part of COL's capacity building activities for Open Educational Resources in Media for Learning.


 * Facilitated the development of an OER content repository for Workshop Materials & Good Practices, in Media for Learning
 * Provided facilitation and meeting support of a local Media for Learning training workshop in Jeffrey Town, Jamaica (COL, UNESCO & ICT for Development)
 * Supporting the development and planning of a 'pilot' capacity building for 99 women (33 NGOs in Africa) at Radio Mang'elete (Kenya). Partners include ECONEWS Africa, COL, Radio Mang’elete, UNESCO and the Kenya Community Media Network.
 * Provided workshop support and planning for public health stakeholder workshop at World Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC) Conference in Ivory Coast, April 27-30, 2009, in collaboration with COL, International AIDS Society, EcoNews Africa and 8-10 regional partners interested in developing effective learning programs and good practices for HIV AIDS Treatment Literacy & Community Media/Radio.
 * Developed and planned a regional facilitators workshop in St. Vincent & the Grenadines and COL-UNESCO workshop in Caribbean - Caribbean Network of Community Multimedia Centres
 * * Engaged stakeholders and coached facilitators. Used a Train--the-Trainer approach - 'modelling the way'. Designed and facilitated the development of:
 * An international Community Media Community of Practice (CMCoP), focused on organization development, good practices and effective learning programs.
 * An HIV AIDS Treatment Literacy Portal and LearnShare HIV/AIDS Community of Practice, in collaboration with the International AIDS Society (Switzerland) and ECONEWS, Kenya.
 * An Organization Development Community of Practice
 * Wrote articles for Farm Radio International, TeleCentre News and COL's newswletter, Connections.

(3) Governance and Leadership
(Reporting to Tanyss Munro, Ph.D., Education Specialist, Governance, COL)


 * Designed in-country governance / leadership workshops and ODL planning sessions (Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands)
 * Co-developed objectives, agenda and design of ODL Think Tank on Governance in London, UK (July 2008), attended by representatives from the World Bank, UN Development Programme (UNDP), Commonwealth Secretariat and Commonwealth Foundation, and regional organisations from developing countries.
 * Stakeholder communications, community facilitation and workshop design, for ODL resources in governance.
 * Developed reporting template for COL's Board of Governors
 * Facilitating WikiGovernance & Learning4Peace project nodes on WikiEducator.
 * Coordinating development of Learning Design Toolkits ~ a joint project of FreeContent4NGOs - for NGO governance
 * Facilitating COLLaGE community discussions on Google Groups (i.e., COL's Leadership, Governance and Empowerment Community.
 * Developing the COLLaGE COLLaGE Community blog
 * Provided needs analysis input to COL-Commonwealth Youth Programme's Governance Social Networking initiative.