EXPERIENCE
a different way to facilitate.

Change it Up PD helps educators, leaders, and social service providers build skills in facilitating groups, delivering training, and supporting change.

We believe that innovative and effective training and learning materials are important. But we also know that the approach to how those materials are used can matter even more.

We also understand that supporting facilitators and other front line workers supports learners. It increases client success and builds better outcomes for people, programs and organizations.

That’s why we offer CiU P.D. Training – professional development that supports the ‘How’.

It was like soul food. In learning how to create the safe container for the group, I can go inward and nurture myself too.”
– Facilitator Training Participant, 2021

What does the course look like?

The course provides an opportunity to dig deeper into the ‘How’ of working in the field of Human Services. It looks at questions like:

How do we help facilitate growth and change in the people we serve?
How do we support clients with a multitude of complexities that can impact their journey?
And how do we support ourselves as we navigate working in a ‘helping’ profession?

The training includes:

Interactive online group Sessions (2.5 hrs. each x 4)
Readings, reflection activities and resources to prepare for each session (approximately 10 hrs.)
Access to Change it Up Workshops

This is not one-size-fits-all training. How you choose to use the materials and the approach will be unique to your experience and your cultural lens. But it is designed to focus on some of the larger things that are true for all of us.

How our human brains learn and change and grow.
What approaches can foster that change and growth.

Who could benefit?

Facilitators, trainers, educators and client-support professionals with any level of experience – in short, anyone working in Human Services and Education.

Whether you work directly in training or with clients in another capacity, there are opportunities here to expand your skill set and share your expertise. And for us all to grow together in doing this work.

What if I’m not currently a Facilitator?

This course models techniques, strategies and methods that can be used to facilitate groups of all sizes, and groups that may form for a wide variety of reasons. Whether you work with families, couples, small groups or large groups – and whether you work as a coach, a counsellor, an aid worker or run training programs for employment or otherwise, these techniques and strategies can help you in those interactions. Help you to ask questions, draw people out, to listen and to have difficult conversations. With one person or 30.
It also models an approach to being with learners and clients; an approach to how we interact and how we carry out our role as ‘helpers’. Whether you are in Social Services, Human Resources, Health Services or Client Service of any kind, there are approaches, concepts and tools that can help you provide those services more compassionately and effectively.
This PD course also offers an approach to supporting wellbeing in our clients and in ourselves; because it’s not just our clients and learners who come with complex lives, histories and stressors. We do as well. And we need to know how to be aware of the ways that stress and trauma shows up for people, including ourselves. How does it affect our ability to learn, to show up, to get and keep employment. How does it affect how we do our jobs and how we interact with clients?

What if I want my whole department or organization to join?

We love it when whole organizations or communities join this P.D. as a group. This helps everyone be on the same page. So they can have discussions about how all of this applies to what they do, using shared language around what it means to help. And so that everyone has the same mindset in approaching the human beings we serve. How we see people for their best selves. How we start with what’s right.

Although I have been facilitating for 20+ years, I came away with new ideas and have embraced them in my practice.”
– Facilitator Training Participant, 2021

What’s needed to participate?