Designing and Facilitating Meetings for Equity | May 23-24, 2024 | CA

Thursday, May 23 - Friday, May 24, 2023 | 8:00 am – 4:00 pm Pacific

$800 per person | course ONLY

$1,000 per person | course AND DFME Community of Practice (June 11, 2024)

When planning adult learning and collaboration, it’s essential to design an experience that moves beyond a series of tasks or items to address. This is particularly true when guiding a group through conversations focused on issues of equity and other emotionally-charged challenges. Designing and Facilitating Meetings for Equity offers essential knowledge and skills for setting the conditions necessary for effective discussion and collaboration focused on equity work, as well as facilitation skills to support you to respond to the particular dynamics of the group you are working with.

Designing agendas and planning activities is a crucial foundation for productive collaboration – but even the best plans can be sidelined by participant anxieties or volatile emotions that create unproductive group dynamics. Facilitating the particular dynamics of any group is complex, challenging work – especially when guiding people through discussions and work focused on equity issues.

This institute will provide an opportunity to learn about and practice applying strategies and structures that support productive meetings that encourage full participation and engagement amongst your team. We will also help you to understand what’s underneath the challenges your group is facing and learn facilitation skills that can create a team with greater agency and effectiveness. In addition, we will model and provide strategies for deepening connections and engagement in meetings and learning sessions.

Participants will:

• Experience a powerful model of effective adult learning and learn how to design a similar experience in their own context
• Gain new knowledge and frameworks for agenda design, whole person learning, cultivating a positive group dynamic, and developing effective teams
• Learn about the neuroscience of emotion to help predict and respond to strong emotions in the group, especially when addressing equity issues
• Learn new strategies, get new tools (e.g. agenda templates, meeting activities, facilitation tips) and make a plan to use them in their context

In addition to practice and skill development, you will:

• Strengthen how you understand and effectively facilitate groups of people as they work toward equity together
• Expanding your approach to designing meaningful collaboration and supporting groups to become effective equity-focused teams.

We provide an advance draft of our slide deck 24 hours before the institute. Breakfast and lunch will be provided on both institute days.

We are intensely focused on humanizing our spaces. We focus on interactivity and connection by providing frequent body breaks, and attending to learning, practice, and healing in community.

In an effort to create accessible spaces for everyone, we ask that participants refrain from wearing scented products such as perfume/colognes, hair products, cosmetics, and scented lotions while attending our event, as these products can trigger serious health issues for those with fragrance allergies and/or chemical sensitivities. For more information on being fragrance-free, visit this Fragrance Free Toolkit.

By registering for this event, participants agree to the COVID-19 ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND LIABILITY WAIVER AND RELEASE OF CLAIMS and the [External] FY23 NEP Pandemic Safety Policy_Updated 3.22.23

Participants will receive pre-reads and resources prior to the meeting via email. Please add [email protected] to your contacts to ensure you receive course communications.

Registration by credit card on Eventbrite is our preferred method. We are a small (but mighty) organization and processing and collecting check payments for our events has a high administrative impact.

Please visit our registration page on our website for information on paying by check or purchase order and our cancellation and registration transfer policy.

Contact the National Equity Project at  with questions.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Oakstop - California Ballroom, 1736 Franklin St, Oakland, United States