Our Approach

At Compass Training we devise customized workshops to help overcome current challenges. Through practical hands-on learning, our expert facilitators ensure that participants gain knowledge and useful approaches that can transferred to the day to day work environment.

We incorporate a variety of innovative concepts and approaches, such as Appreciative Inquiry, Arts Based Approaches, Participatory Research, and Outcome Mapping into all our training and facilitation services.

What's in it for you?

• On-going support to transform the way you work – become a place where everyone is welcomed, feels integrated and connected.
• Your staff are better able to deal with the challenges they face on a daily basis.
• Increased effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery.
• Renewed commitment and inspiration to your work.

Appreciative Inquiry:

Appreciative Inquiry is a strength-based approach to change for organizations and individuals. Here's how the AI Commons describes it:

"Appreciative Inquiry is about the co-evolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them... AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system's capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential... In AI, the arduous task of intervention gives way to the speed of imagination and innovation; instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, and design."

Appreciative Inquiry has been used extensively in private sector organizations to support positive change processes. The YWCA began using Appreciative Inquiry in 2001. In 2004, the Peaceful Communities Group championed Appreciative Inquiry as a means of fostering peaceful healthy communities in Peterborough by setting up an Appreciative Inquiry training institute organized by the United Way and funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

Arts Based Approaches:

Arts Based Approaches include methods that are open ended, fun and creative. We use whole brain activities which include visioning, drawing, collage and role play.

Participatory (Action) Research:

Participatory or Action Research involves all relevant parties in defining what questions or issues need to be investigated and acted upon in order to understand and transform a given situation. In Participatory Research, all parties affected by the situation play a significant role in defining the research, in determining the actions that should be taken as a result of the research, and in assessing how the actions have transformed the original situation.

Outcome Mapping:

Outcome Mapping is a planning, monitoring and evaluation process developed by the International Development Research Centre. It focuses on identifying changes in the behaviour, relationships, activities or actions of people, groups and organizations with whom an organization is working. Key to this approach is the development, through participatory workshops, of "progress markers" for the program or service in question. The effectiveness of the program or service can then be monitored and evaluated by its success in reaching progress markers established with the community the program or service was designed to serve. Outcome Mapping is geared towards organizational learning and allows organizations to strengthen strategies and gather immediate information about the effectiveness of their work.