There was a time when our workshops were emotional highs – for us. We thought we were pretty good at doing them, and the people who attended seemed to agree. We got lots of compliments, with participants coming up at the end of each session to tell us how great our presentations were, how well we spoke, and how much they had learned.

But the funny thing was: nothing seemed to happen as a result of what we did.

Dunu Roy, one of our advisors (and Latika Roy’s son!), helped us think about workshops and training differently.  He pointed out that for training to be successful, we need to keep three things in mind:

• people have to want what we are offering
• what we are offering has to fall within the context in which the participants live
• large groups work more effectively than small

And the over-arching truth is that people have to solve their own problems. No trainer or facilitator, no matter how skilled, can ever do it for them.

Slowly, we have begun to change the way we work.

The very next workshop was a revelation. For the first time, we ended it with no applause. People seemed happy, but not in awe. Nobody came rushing up to tell us how their lives would never be the same. No one asked for our autographs, no one said we were the most amazing people they had ever met. Instead, there was a sense of accomplishment, of purpose, of determination. People seemed to feel they had worked hard for two days and that something real had been achieved. Most important, they acted as if they were the ones who had achieved it, which in fact was how it is.