© 2001-2010 WTeamUp, Participação e Empowerment

Mission

The mission of WTeamUp is to build knowledge over decision-making processes, identifying the key-issues involved. The team seeks to enhance dialogue conditions among stakeholders who have a direct or indirect interest in the resolution of a complex and controversial environmental problem. We look for:

A public participation process that goes over and beyond the emotional and populist situations;

A dialogue that is clear, respectful, open, constructive, creative and innovative;

Optimizing the productivity of large meetings with several stakeholders, though innovative techniques of group dynamics and consensus building;

Clarifying problems, interests, priorities and alternatives to a commitment, thought genuine consensus, long-lasting commitments and partnerships;

Helping stakeholders to work constructively, motivating the trust among them to ensure shared responsibility, in order to get tangible results and innovative solutions that work in practice;

Using financial and human resources, as well as time, in an efficient way.

Why We Exist

The actual process for carrying out decision-making, concertation and public participation processes in the environmental planning and management fields has proven to be ineffective in developing an awareness and mobilizing the various stakeholders around the political solutions adopted.

The development, implementation and evaluation of plans, programs, policies and strategies are limited by bureaucratic procedures, both administrative and legislative, which:

disregard the need for coordination and cooperation among the different governmental entities with jurisdiction over environmental issues, for those bureaucratic processes only seek to obtain suggestions and opinions through consultation;

stir up emotional and populist responses from the stakeholders, who do not feel responsible for the implementation of the defended solutions (making them politically unstable), for those bureaucratic processes only foresee public participation quite late in the decision-making process;

do not allow stakeholders to expose their visions, needs and aspirations in face of the problems at stake, in a clear and objective manner, for the nature of those bureaucratic processes are quite hierarquical, formal and they are not interactive at all.

Alternatively, WTeamUp proposes to analyse, research and interprete the characteristics of the decision-making processes, learning with the lessons of successful cases and developing alternative strategies for the dificulties encountered. For that purpose, WTeamUp structures and conducts interactive participatory processes, where true, constructive, effective, and creative dialogue among stakeholders is the key to success.

What We Do

WTeamUp develops its activities on the field of interactive participatory environmental planning, policy analysis and decision-making, namely in the development of Plans, Programs, Policies and Integrated Environmental Strategies, as well as, development of Management Plans, Action Plans and Programs, and Cenario Building and Visioning. For that purpose, WTeamUp develops:

Interactive participatory processes, using facilitation techniques, agenda setting, important question outlining, and scheduling activities to help get the work done on time;

Consensus building, facilitation, mediation and negotiation of environmental conflicts, by understanding the sources of conflict, developing a step-by-step process to conciliation, using creative dialogue and discussion methods to find alternative forms to adversarial dispute resolution;

Training and counseling on Interactive Participatory Methods, to experts, managers and all those who feel the need to use effective tools to improve the coordination and the communication within their teams, the productivity of their meetings and the resolution of complex environmental problems.