How can you facilitate learning and reflection after a community organizing activity?

1 Why reflect?

Reflection is a key component of learning, especially for community organizers who often face complex and dynamic challenges. Reflection helps you to assess your actions, identify your strengths and weaknesses, learn from your successes and failures, and improve your strategies and skills. It also helps you to celebrate your achievements, appreciate your team members, and acknowledge your supporters. By reflecting on your community organizing activity, you can enhance your personal and collective learning and development.

2 How to reflect?

Reflecting on your community organizing activity can take many forms, depending on your goals, preferences, and resources. You may choose to reflect individually or collectively, formally or informally, verbally or visually. Common methods of reflection include journaling, debriefing, feedback, SWOT analysis, storytelling, and visual methods. For example, journaling allows you to write down your thoughts and feelings about the activity in a personal or shared journal. Debriefing involves having a structured conversation with team members or other stakeholders about the success and failures of the activity. Feedback is a great tool for giving constructive criticism to yourself or others about their performance. SWOT analysis can help you identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your activity. Storytelling is a great way to share stories or narratives about your activity and its impact on the community. Visual methods such as drawings, photos, and videos can be used to express or illustrate reflections.

3 When to reflect?

There is no fixed rule on when to reflect on your community organizing activity, but it is generally advisable to do it as soon as possible after the activity, while the memory is still fresh and the emotions are still raw. However, you can also reflect at different stages of your organizing process, such as before, during, or after the activity, or at regular intervals. The frequency and timing of your reflection may depend on the nature, duration, and complexity of your activity, as well as the availability and willingness of your participants.

4 Who to involve?

Reflection can be a personal or a collective process, depending on your objectives and context. You can reflect on your own, or with your team, partners, allies, beneficiaries, or opponents. The choice of who to involve in your reflection may depend on the level of trust, openness, and diversity among the participants, as well as the potential benefits and risks of sharing your reflections. For example, you may want to involve people who can offer different perspectives, insights, or feedback, or who can help you to implement the lessons learned from your reflection. However, you may also want to avoid people who may be hostile, judgmental, or uninterested in your reflection.

5 What to ask?

Reflection is an active and critical process that calls for meaningful and relevant questions to be asked of oneself or others. These questions can help to deepen understanding, challenge assumptions, and generate new ideas. Examples of such questions include: what was the purpose of the activity and was it achieved? What were the most significant or surprising outcomes or impacts? What were the most enjoyable or challenging aspects? What did you learn about yourself, your team, your community, or your issue? How did your activity affect relationships, networks, or alliances? How did it align with values, principles, or vision? What are the implications or consequences of your activity? And what are the next steps or actions to take based on your reflection?

6 How to use it?

Reflection is a learning and change process that can help you transform your knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, or practices. It is important to use your reflection to inform future actions, decisions, or strategies. You can do this by documenting your reflections in written, oral, or visual form; using them to set new goals or objectives; applying them to modify or enhance your actions; comparing your reflections with expectations; and communicating them to team members and partners. This will help you measure progress and assess impact.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?