MFC provides training and capacity-building for all levels, from executive coaching to in-the-field instruction and mentoring. We draw on our experience to develop customized materials for each client’s specific needs.
Our training programs are delivered on site or online. Our tailored programming is supported by a growing bank of introductory online materials to help your staff derive maximum benefit.
Managing engagement
This course provides community relations managers or supervisors with the knowledge and skills necessary to establish and manage a best-practice stakeholder engagement program.
With an emphasis on engagement management systems, the course is ideal for training new managers/supervisors or introducing new systems and improving the performance standards of current staff.
The instruction is tailored to specific needs and ideally combines lectures and on-the-job mentoring.
Basic and advanced community relations officer courses
This program provides a community relations team with the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out a full range of CR activities.
The courses cover everything from communication techniques to grievance management, negotiation techniques and conflict management.
The basic course helps a company establish a new community relations team; the advanced course further develops the team’s capacity.
The courses are tailored to students’ experience and needs and can be up to two weeks of intense instruction at each level, consisting of an appropriate mix of lecture, case-study review and interactive practical exercises.
Socially responsible security
MFC provides a variety of training options for companies implementing an effective socially responsible security program based on teh Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (VPSHR). The five-day-long core course provides the professional security staff with best-practice knowledge of how to balance security and human rights in today’s challenging environment.
Using an appropriate mix of lectures, case-study reviews and interactive practical exercises, the course is tailored to a company’s specific needs.
MFC also provides a series of shorter seminars for executives, managers, general employees, security contractors and community relations specialists.
Other quick course modules MFC provides can be geared to train supervisors, community relations officers or as train-the-trainer sessions. They include:
Engagement Approaches and Techniques
This training module discusses the changing nature of engagement, the purposes of engagement and covers successful techniques for establishing, maintaining and controlling constructive relations with stakeholders.
Stakeholder Mapping and Analysis
This training module discusses the applications for stakeholder mapping, mapping techniques and analysis of stakeholder attitudes, interests, motivations and relationships. It explains how mapping and analysis becomes the basis for an effective engagement and community relations program.
Community Information and Issue Response Management
This module provides a framework for analyzing issues and developing a village-level information plan in response to those issues that includes crafting messages and delivering them effectively in the village setting.
Strategic Social Investment
Are your community development and social investments a cost to your company or do they add value? This module looks at ways to strategically target that social investment to bring mutual benefits to the project and its stakeholders so its value is clear to all involved. Additional units on specific topics can be incorporated on request. For example, management and participatory development planning.
Bringing Social Management into Alignment with the IFC Performance Standards and Equator Principles
MFC is increasingly tasked with helping projects conform to IFC Performance Standards. This module looks at social aspects of the IFC PS through a risk-management lens, highlights lender priorities and discusses how those issues can be brought into alignment between loan closure, project completion and into operations and, eventually, closure.
Strategic Communications for Natural Resource Management Companies
Natural resource companies often have to respond to and manage stakeholder viewpoints that are polarized and deeply entrenched. Proactive communications tailored to the project environment and coordinated with community and external relations approaches build credibility and consensus. This module addresses how to communicate effectively, especially in the challenging media environments of developing countries.
Turning Conflict around in Natural Resource Management Operations
MFC often helps projects facing acute or chronic conflict with neighbouring communities. This module covers the basics of conflict assessment and intervention and provides guidance on strategies a company can use to reduce the risk of resurgence of conflict and to minimize negative outcomes should conflict re-emerge despite best efforts.
Human Rights Impact Assessment
Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) is now recommended under the IFC standards for companies in high-risk settings. Pressure is also increasing from activist and humanitarian sectors for companies to demonstrate a rights-based approach in their operations. The Fund for Peace is one of the most experienced organizations in the world at implementing HRIAs for natural-resource companies. Courses can be theoretical or practical, accompanying a participatory HRIA process.
Optimizing Local Hiring and Contracting Approaches
Local hiring and contracting are key social-acceptance issues for companies the world over. This module brings together more than 20 years of MFC experience in facilitating successful local hiring and contracting initiatives for companies around the globe.
Media Training and Communications Support
This module teaches your key communicators how to deal directly with media, and shows them how to prepare strategic messaging campaigns designed to keep your company ahead of developing issues. With strong media management, you can foster greater understanding in the communities where you operate.
Video Production and Management
In a world dominated by social media and powerful imagery, you must not only operate in a supportive and sustainable manner but be seen to be doing so. If you do not tell your own story, others will tell it for you and their version may not be accurate, much less flattering. In this module, we teach you how to present yourself and communicate your key messages on camera. We can also provide video production.
Have a specific need?
We can bring our experience to bear in guiding your team on anything from managing grievances or monitoring social outcomes to designing community relations materials.