My Lived Experience

This is my lived experience as a member of IAP2 written during the travel time to Denver. I was going to sanitize it a bit, but then I read Leah Jaramillo’s story and I am grateful for your honesty and telling it like it was for you. And as you write, I hope the many stories can be heard and acknowledged and with the understanding that can be gained through the shared stories, we can take the useful stuff with us as we shape our future. 

I started work in local government in South Australia (SA) in 2004 as a Community Relations Officer.  It was a “dog’s breakfast” of a job and my first experience at any level of government. As the role morphed, I realised I was inadequately equipped to deal with the direction it was taking which was towards “pubic consultation” as it was known before the days of IAP2 in SA. I reached out to people working in councils and found there were a handful of people who had a keen interest in public consultation but little knowledge or experience beyond what the legislation required us to do. At the time there was only one IAP2 member in SA and she worked for the City of Adelaide. I reached out to her and she told me about IAP2 and how much she had got out of the training. So rather than try to go it alone, we made enquiries with a small group of practitioners in Sydney who met on occasions to discuss public consultation and share a wine and good food; and what brought them together was their awareness of IAP2.

We asked them how we might go about setting up a network in SA and their approach at the time was very much the Adidas approach, “just do it”. But we were a group of community organisers and we knew if we wanted to get people involved we needed to get organised. And so we held our first professional development network event called “The Good, the Bad and how not to let it get Ugly”. The council I worked for at the time gave us the use of their auditorium for free, we charged a gold coin donation to cover catering costs and one of the people in our group let us use a case study from her council. After that, IAP2 was up and running in SA.

Local stuff - Over the next 5 years:

·  we held 4 professional developments sessions a year. We used an event form that I emailed out for everyone to nominate what task they would take on such as booking a venue, catering, promotions so the workload was spread and it helped to engage new people along the way

·  we brought Vivien Twyford and her trainers across to SA to deliver the certificate course and they did a great job. But SA is a very conservative place and the feedback was, “the training is great, but in SA we can’t afford the eastern states prices. That is when I started to make enquiries about becoming a trainer, so I could deliver the certificate training in my home state at my home state rates

·  we established a relationship with the Local Government Association of South Australia and in 2007 they asked me to develop a community engagement framework for SA based on the IAP2 model which is still in place today. They continue to sponsor the Foundations training through their Training and Development Program despite external pressure to change.

·  we also hosted the annual IAP2 Australasia Conference in 2008 and that is where the cracks started to appear for us in SA. The previous conference was held in Melbourne and the event coordinator who was also the Secretariat came up short for the organising committee. The coordinator was good at relationships, but not so good at process, so the SA Conference Organising Committee made it clear in their project scope they wanted to go with a local event coordinator if the conference was to proceed. The project scope was ignored by the AA Board from October to February of the following year and then things got really messy. Long-story-short, the Organising Committee members felt confused and devalued by the whole process; I put in around $10,000 of my own money to the conference through lost wages and plugging financial holes created by influential individuals; the President called the AGM in Sydney the week before the conference in Adelaide rather than at the conference and consequently, our numbers were down because of the choices people had to make re: travel and accommodation; and the President did not attend the conference. I almost walked away from IAP2 after that, but I reminded myself why I joined (to further the practice of P2) and I promptly put the egos aside, including my own

·  I was the SA IAP2 Regional Coordinator for 5 years – during that time we built up the membership and at one point we had the highest membership in Australia. As IAP2 went through the Affiliate process and things shifted from a volunteer run organisation to a staff administration, the role of the regional volunteers changed along with the way things were run. The volunteers, who paid their membership, were now being asked to continue to do what they had always done and also pay extra fees for the privilege. Us “old timers” in the organising group had always contributed financially to local events, but the younger cash strapped members were not “buying it”. On reflection, this is probably where the shift from member organisation to business had its genesis. This is when the membership started to drop off in SA. I lost all trust in AA when the constitution was changed without the consent of the members. The shift from member organisation to a business entity was an example of DAD that I have resisted using in the training room. I became a member of the USA Affiliate in 2014.

·  We had a number of goes at jump starting things but things had become very NSW centric. I mentored a young woman in the role of Regional Coordinator, but she stepped away after a few months telling me she was not prepared to be treated the way she had seen me and the others treated. She used the “bully” word and in truth, there was quite a bit of that going on in Australasia.

Training stuff - I attended my first IAP2 Conference in Montreal in 2006 and met Wendy Green Lowe. She inspired me to become a trainer and when I got back to Adelaide I knew I had to apply to the training academy. I was over the moon when I was accepted and I can remember my daughter thinking I had injured myself because I was jumping around our kitchen screaming with joy.

I went through the academy with Richard Delaney, Margie Harvie, John Ross, Michelle Feenan, Amanda Newbery, Gerard Reilly, Ruth Yabes, Jane Kuchins, Brenda Walton and Stuart Waters.

It was tough going in those first few years as I worked at gaining a better understanding of the materials and making them my own. After a few years, I realised the students were entering the training with higher levels of P2 knowledge than when I first started delivering. I think this is a testament to the influence IAP2 has had on the practice of P2 in Australia. In response to this realisation, I completed post graduate studies in Dialogue, Deliberation and Public Engagement (DDPE) through the Fielding Graduate University USA in 2010 to increase my knowledge & abilities to contribute to the improvement of public participation training and facilitation across South Australia. I was granted an Internship for the 2013/14 DDPE program at Kansas State University which really helped me to appreciate the complexity of P2. I bring this additional knowledge into my delivery of the Foundations Program.

In 2009 I became a EOP2 trainer; I have been on the Training Advisory Committee (TAC) for the past few years and this year I am privileged to be a T3 Trainer for the Candidate Trainers Pilot 2017.

Around 2011, the call was sent out for trainers to take part in the Innovations Project, i.e. a project to revise the certificate program which resulted in the development of the IAP2 Foundations Program. Doesn’t sound too bad when you write it like this, but it was not good! Bottom line here – the organisation didn’t use the decision making model we teach and encourage others to use; the key stakeholders (trainers) were not invited to the party; and a person without project management skills was appointed to lead the project. Again, long-story-short, the project got messy and came to a halt. A review of the project took place and in June 2013, 15 trainers met in LA in a show of goodwill to get the Innovation Project back on track.

If you are still reading by this stage – thank you for hanging in with me.

There were lots of things that came out of the LA Trainers Forum, but one thing is for sure, the trainers involved worked their butts off to bring the materials up to date; and all done on volunteer’s hours. All in, I personally volunteered over 3 years to the project.

Then just as the Foundations Program was about to be launched, IAP2 Australasia (AA) launched an Australasian Certificate. That might have been okay if the following hadn’t happened:

·  IAP2 Australasia announced in April 2014 the following:

“The IAP2 Federation recently informed us that they would cease to offer the existing Certificate in Public Participation globally from 30 June 2014. Yesterday, the Board of IAP2 Australasia decided that the Australasian Affiliate will not be scheduling or promoting the updated Foundations training program which we understand you are licensed to deliver from 1 July  2014”. This means that if you intend to deliver the new International Foundations Training Program, you will be responsible for all aspects of promotion and scheduling”.

·  There was no transition period, so I had been training for AA rather than promoting and delivering my own training, so I (along with other trainers) was left with a big gap to deal with

·  There was an “however” though:

“However, we would like to invite you to be part of the new IAP2 Australasian Engagement Trainer Program, which is the proposed process for professional development and subsequent licensing of trainers as appropriate”.

·  This meant that although I had already put in the hard yards gaining my training licenses, and spent time and money, I was expected to do it all over again. I was not offered any prior learning status or discount for attending training to get myself up to speed with the Australasian certificate

·  The 5 trainers who continue to this day to deliver the Foundations Program in Australia felt let down by the trainers in Australia who it appears knew how things were unfolding and did not share that with us. Sadly, there has been a rift between us all since then.

·  While trainers have continued to pay a license fee to the Federation for delivery of the Foundations Program, AA does not pay anything to the Federation for delivery of their certificate program. For this reason I will not deliver the AA certificate. It is at odds with my values and unethical. The explanation given for non-payment of fees is that the AA certificate was developed by AA. However, it is delivered under the IAP2 brand and without that, it would take a lot to break into the training market.

Other  stuff - Okay, I am just about finished this part of the story. I have been asked over the years, “What makes IAP2 unique”? My response is that we have 3 Foundations that guide our organisation, i.e. the Core Values, the Spectrum of Participation and the Code of Ethics. I don’t just know about these foundations and teach them, I also apply them to my practice. I find it unethical and unfair to take the generosity and hard work of volunteers and profit from it. I did say this was going to be an account of my lived experience of being an IAP2 member. So in my opinion, if we tolerate behaviour that does not support our practice of participation, we have no right to hold ourselves up as leaders in public participation. 

I almost walked away again this year, but I reminded myself again of why I joined (to further the practice of P2) and that is what this week will be about in my story.

Quote: “Choose to be optimistic, it feels better.” – Dalai Lama XIV

Cheers

Barbara