Facilitation & Engagement Training Series

Context
Across Nova Scotia, many community organizations are working hard to make a positive impact. Yet a common challenge they face is the lack of skills, confidence, and tools to lead effective community engagement processes. Too often, groups must rely on outside experts to facilitate important conversations—limiting their ability to fully own and sustain their work. At the same time, bringing people together to learn alongside one another can spark new ideas, collaborations, and momentum for collective action.

Our Role
Colab partnered with Engage Nova Scotia to design and deliver a three-part training series focused on building facilitation and community engagement capacity. Each session combined hands-on learning, practice with participatory tools and frameworks, and conversations with guest speakers who shared practical wisdom from their work in collaboration, hosting, and cross-cultural gathering. The workshops were structured around three key areas of practice:

• Designing Engagement & Preparing Well – exploring frameworks and approaches to set up engagement processes for success.

• Facilitation Tools, Practices & Processes – equipping participants with practical methods for holding inclusive, generative conversations.

• Harvesting & Evaluation – focusing on how to make meaning from conversations, support decision-making, and carry learning forward.

The series also emphasized relationship-building, peer-to-peer learning, and connecting community leaders across different regions.

Outcome
The training series equipped community leaders from across the province with practical tools and greater confidence to design and host engagement processes in their own contexts. By investing in local capacity, the workshops reduced reliance on external expertise and strengthened the ability of communities to lead their own conversations about the issues that matter most. Beyond the skills gained, the series also fostered new connections among participants—laying the groundwork for collaboration, shared learning, and collective action well into the future.