ICA Netherlands
Associate Member
About Us
ICA Netherland (ICA NL) was founded in 1977. In the beginning ICA organized ‘dorpsdagen’, ‘community/village days’. Through these projects ICA NL experimented in Netherlands with the participative way of facilitating community development inspired by ICA worldwide en ToP Technology. In the Eighties the main activities shifted to prepare people for work related to international development projects. Together with a few other ICA’s in Europe a nine-day course to train participants in being a facilitator in development processes was developed. Also intermediation for placements abroad was one of the main activities to be able to connect participants to projects.
Since 2010 the focus is more based in the Netherlands, mostly in training people in how to use participatory methods like the ToP Technology. Mostly we do our work in the social sector. In the Netherlands there is a changing environment of decentralisation and participative way of working is an important base to do so. We aim to train professionals and volunteers, we create projects based on ToP Values and we facilitate groups processes on demand.
Our trainers and facilitators are experts in difference fields the Netherlands and abroad. Their specialisations are on youth participation, community development, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, management consulting, change management, coaching, and conflict resolution.
Nowadays ICA Nederland is a learning network with trainers, facilitators and other partners who are realizing mutual projects, trainings and events.
Our Mission
ICA Netherlands exists to develop and sustain a culture of participation. We want to strengthen the capacities of organizations, communities, and individuals to build and implement innovative plans of action that draw upon assets and social capital in a collaborative manner. We want to contribute towards a culture of participation by developing the skills and knowledge to enable widespread understanding and effective use of facilitation methods and skills and to inform and encourage the behaviours and attitudes which recognise and value participation amongst the people who use, experience, commission and promote facilitation methods.
Our Values
• Facilitation helps organizations and groups of people to solve their own challenges.
• A sustainable development occurs when people are meaningfully engaged impact their lives and the organizations and communities they are a part of.
• Inclusive participation and profound respect helps people work creatively, minimize conflict and accomplish more together.
• Participants of the workshops (who believe in ICA’s values) must be fostered. That’s why we host meetings to learn from each other via experience exchange and collaboration.
• We believe in playfulness to create an atmosphere in which people want to collaborate to work on common goals.
• We place energy where it will make the most difference.
• Everyone shares responsibility for the current reality and has something to contribute to its transformation.
• Honour the past, affirm the present and see the future as possibility.
• The people best equipped to deal with a situation are those affected by it.
• The more inclusive the input, the more effective the output.
• Reflective practices are key to individual and organisational growth.
Our People
Jeske de Kort
Inge van Steekelenburg
Mara Verduin
Our Activities
ToP Methods
We organise 2/3 open Groups Facilitation Methods trainings a year and on demand we give this training in company as well. In this training we learn the participants how to use the Conversation Method, the Consensus Workshop and the Action Planning.
Facilitation Training
About how to facilitate groups, how to design a program and to improve the use of ToP methods in your facilitation.
Community of Practice
Our COP brings together facilitators and participants from past courses to learn from and with each other to deepening out the meaning of the ToP Methods and how to use them in different occasions and we offer workshops in new complementary facilitation methods every now and then.
Facilitation
Our trainers and facilitators are also available to facilitate processes for the matter of teams being able to focus on the content. For this we use in principle ICA methodologies (Conversation Method , Consensus Workshop Method , Action Planning Methodology , Strategic Planning and the Historic Scan). Obviously the process is customized and if this fits better we also use other facilitation and participatory methods such as World Café , Open Space , Improvement Groups , Oasis Games and Pro Action Café.