Community workshops

Community workshops are a great way to spark conversation, build capability and create positive change in how women and girls experience sport. Anyone can facilitate learning for their peers and your experiences add value to the learning of others. This guide will take you through the key steps to design and deliver a workshop that’s meaningful, inclusive, and engaging for everyone involved.

Step 1: Build your facilitation skills

Before leading others, start by strengthening your own facilitation practice.

An effective facilitator plays the role of a guide rather than a teacher, providing safe environments and participant centred approaches that accelerate learning. Your first step is to make sure you have the skills to bring out the best in people. A great way to begin to develop your own facilitation practice, or build on your existing skills, is to complete the Facilitation Essential Skills Course.

This course is designed to provide educators, facilitators, instructors and trainers with the contemporary facilitation skills and tools they require to design and deliver optimal learning environments.

Step 2: Understand your community

Every workshop should start with listening. Take time to understand who your learners are, what matters to them and what they need.

Developing a great workshop begins with understanding the problem or opportunities in your environment. To do this, a great facilitator will listen to people in community to better understand the needs of coaches and officials. You may consider engaging with:

• Participants – to hear about the experiences, motivations and challenges of women and girls in your club, association or environment.
• Coaches and officials – to understand their perspectives and what support they need to grow.
• Local stakeholders – such as volunteers, parents, administrators and schools who can help shape or host your session.

This step ensures your workshop reflects real needs, not assumptions — and helps create trust, relevance, and shared ownership.

Step 3: Research and get inspired

Before you design your session, explore resources to help you on your way.

Now that you understand the needs of the people in your environment, it's time to start researching! There are so many resources available to Facilitators wanting to develop opportunities for learning for coaches and officials working with women and girls.

• Resources page – for practical guides and tools.
• Dear Coach video series – to hear directly from women and girls about what they need from their coaches.
• Stories page – Stories are a great way to bring information to life. These stories are examples of how coaches and officials are already driving change in their communities.

Understanding the key considerations will help you shape content that’s evidence-informed and grounded in lived experience.

Step 4: Design your workshop

Use what you’ve learned to create an engaging, participant-centered session.

Consider frameworks like LEARNS (explored in the Facilitation Essential Skills course) when developing a learning experience that brings this information to life.

• Learner centered - understand the motivation, knowledge and needs of your learners.
• Environment - design an environment that promotes optimal learning.
• Active engagement - provide opportunities for purposeful practice and problem solving.
• Reflect and review - plan for reflection and connect this with past experiences.
• New knowledge - recognise and value the current knowledge and skills in the room and connect new learning to past knowledge.
• Stretch and challenge - provide a learning zone that stretches the learner and provides support.

As you are designing your learning experience, consider these tips to keep learning engaging and participant-centered:

• Use short activities that invite discussion or problem-solving.
• Incorporate storytelling or case studies to bring ideas to life.
• Use polls, breakout groups, or interactive tools in webinars.
• Encourage participants to share what works in their own environments.
• Always close with reflection and practical takeaways.

Every workshop is an opportunity to connect people, challenge thinking, and inspire change. Start small, stay curious, and help make sport a place where everyone can belong and thrive.