Community leaders have a finely nuanced challenge to meet when they endeavor to be drivers of large-scale social change. Whether leaders of a church congregation, civic group, social organization, human rights organization, or service profession, they dwell in paradox. They want to achieve specific behavioral outcomes in people, while at the same time they must inspire “creative latitude” such that community members self-lead, collaborate, and own those behavioral changes. This paradox is of the most beneficent kind however, because when the leader succeeds in both, the community reveals solutions and applications too many to have been anticipated.

A Docutraining® is an innovative training modality and integrates four primary components:

• documentary-style film,
• hosted teaching of specific skills,
• personal workbook exercises, and
• community group interaction.

A Docutraining® feels very much like a documentary and functions as a skills based training. It inspires self-motivated change at the individual level, allowing communities to successfully tackle important social issues. For example, Stewards of Children: Adults Resolving Child Sexual Abuse in Community is a Docutraining® that teaches adults to protect children from child sexual abuse, in their homes, schools, and community settings. Partnerships in Motion: A Renaissance in Aging is a Docutraining® that teaches the skills of partnership among those who are aging, their family members, work environments and the professionals who serve the aging.

The film incorporates “documentary style” footage of real-life families, community members, and professionals engaged in their respective roles. These subjects and their experiences in the film are real, and firsthand. They are not play-acted “as if.” In addition, these subjects are interviewed about their feelings, emerging skills, new insights, and results of their learning. These interviews are incorporated to add dimension and emotional movement to the training.

The film also incorporates hosted teaching of specific skills. That is, a trainer teaches and reinforces the skills being exhibited by the subjects in the film. Many of the skills are practical and action-based, while others are the inner empowerment skills one needs to engage in behavioral change. These skills are universal, in that they are needed by all participants in the process - family, community, and professional.

The workbook offers in writing the concepts and skills learned through the film. It also provides interactive questions that allow the training participants to think about, plan, and apply the skills in their own lives.  The workbook makes the film specifically relevant to the participants’ lives, and is the first step in behavior change.

Community interaction opens the exchange of ideas and feelings, and expands the possibilities of application for the training participants. Optimally, the training participants will view the film and use the workbook in groups comprised of all types of participants involved in the desired change. The workbook questions are used as the discussion topics. Again, this reinforces personal application, and gives each participant the support of the wider community in thinking about his or her choices and possibilities. That is, the wider community began to adopt the same new behavior, even though they did not have direct contact with the curriculum. The wait list group was essentially “trained” by the presence of, and behavior shifts within, the participant group.

A Docutraining® is useful when:

• There is need for philosophical and practical paradigmatic shifts, particularly when the existing paradigm is implicit and destructive toward human empowerment and dignity.
• The application of the training will be large-scale.
• Participants come from multiple cultures and ethnicities.
• The desired behavioral outcomes are highly dependent on inner skills of human empowerment.
• The desired behavioral outcomes are more multi-dimensional than training can provide using behavioral directives only.
• There is a need for consistency of desire, intention and practice across multiple, even diverging groups of people.
• Creative partnership across inter-related groups and roles is a necessary outcome.
• There is a need for new knowledge, new attitudes and new behavior.
• The desired behavioral changes require an underpinning energetic/emotional shift within the participants.
• There is a need for “lay trainers” to disseminate the training.
• There are examples of “success” and “possibility” within the existing community to be trained.

Some available benefits of a Docutraining® curriculum are:

• The end-users of the training are, effectively, peers of those who convey the content of the training, making it relevant, practical, and inspiring.
• It is a cost-effective and time-efficient way of training all participant groups in a large- scale social change effort, be it national or international.
• It inspires partnership, compassion and cohesion between inter-functioning groups.
• Each participant experiences the training as easy, supportive and compelling.
• Participants witness living, breathing, successful examples of behavioral change, and expand their perception of “possibility” and wholeness within their respective roles.
• “Outlying” professionals and families who are not enrolled in the desired social change, for reasons of bias, fear, or unfamiliarity, may become enrolled through witnessing the varied human experiences in the film.
• A massive amount of learning is provided in a short amount of time, and in an entertaining and emotionally accessible way.
• The training crosses cultures through the use of “universal truths” in human empowerment skills, and presents these skills through culturally divergent voices.
• The creation process is fun and inherently revealing of best practice.

* Docutraining® is a new term in the training and education industry, and is a method created by Phoenix Possibilities Inc.