During the World Bank’s Youth Open House in Washington, D.C. last week, the North America Youth, Development and Peace Network (YDP) – a group of youth organizations and individual youth interested in networking together on youth and development issues – met to discuss how they could advance their network.

I was asked by the YDP’s Interim Steering Committee to serve as facilitator as we heard from guest speakers, guest organizations, and invited participation from all the attendees in discussing potential processes and activities for the YDP. The two-day agenda is posted here.

It was fascinating to spend some time actually within the World Bank headquarters and see some of the behind-the-scenes on how that mammoth organization works and thinks. I’m glad to note that the YDP is careful to point out that “The YDP NA Network is an independent structure which has a relationship with the World Bank. The YDP NA Network does not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank…” Participants included individuals who had spent lots of time protesting and advocating against World Bank policies and also participants who firmly believed that the World Bank is promoting development and reducing global poverty.

Some facilitation strategies I employed over the two days were ICA’s Focused Conversation method, a Round Robin interviewing technique, Open Space technology, Dotmocracy, quick yoga exercises as energizers, an invitation to create and reflect on our conference intentions, a Gestalt activity exploring definitions of leadership, and generally a lot of rephrasing, reflecting, summarizing, and coordinating. As we concluded the two days, the YDP has a process for selecting a Steering Committee Chair and Co-Chair, a series of recommendations for the YDP structure, activities, and communication and participation strategies, and a comprehensive index of how conference participants want to be involved in each of the different recommendations, including the many participants who expressed interest in leading various initiatives.

All in all, the previous week’s silent retreat gave me lots of focus for being entirely present during the two days in Washington, but I’m always glad to be back in Toronto. I’m spending this week exploring my own approaches to conflict in a 40 hour, five day training on interpersonal mediation methods. After a day spent roleplaying different disputants in various mediation scenarios, I’m exhausted, but loving the training – more on that in a future post.