Five E's Unlimited has broad and varied experience with all aspects of the public participation and can guarantee it will be transparent, consensual, and inclusive through the application of private, non-judgmental, non-coercive transformative facilitation. In projects we have worked on requiring public consultation workshop design, including Whistler, BC, Dauphin Island, AL, and the Portland Parish region of Jamaica (WI), we have employed methods such as Technology of Participation (TOP), Collaborative Community Problem-Solving, Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Open Space Technology (OST), Pattern Mapping, Design Charrettes, and the World Café process.

A notable success for Five E’s Unlimited in facililtation and conflict resolution was its design and facilitation of a participatory, sustainable community strategic planning process for Dauphin Island, AL in 2007. The project was initiated, driven, and completed by the community through a transparent, all-inclusive participatory process that actively engaged all stakeholders through the application of transformative facilitation. In recognition of the success of this effort, the Dauphin Island project was picked as a Finalist in the 2009 International Association of Public Participation’s (IAP2) Project of the Year Award. The international recognition by IAP2 on pages 8 and 67 of the above linked report acknowledged the diversity of environmental, social, and economic issues addressed, as well as the project’s promotion of the IAP2 Core Values in public participation.

Dr. R. Warren Flint is also a member of the Senior Facilitator & Mediator Roster of the U.S. Institute of Environmental Conflict Resolution. He has served as a member of this roster since 1999 and his Profile for the USIECR roster is available.

We see our public participation practice as the foundation for achieving the following in our community work:

1. understanding for where the community has been with planning activities that will appreciably inform the project and what the stakeholder aspirations and core values look like regarding a future, sustainable community, which will require;
2. the community’s deep and extensive science-based understanding of ecological, economic, and social sustainability, in all of its temporal, spatial and systemic dimensions, communicated effectively to participants and stakeholders in a way that inspires vision and action, to inform;
3. a thoroughly community-based and community-driven process of deliberation and decision making, engaging all stakeholders in the identity of weaknesses and threats as well as community assets, and capable of guiding the making of difficult trade-offs while creating cohesive win-win solutions, whose outcomes are expressed in;
4. a solid, comprehensive, implementable strategic plan fulfilling all best-practice planning and statutory requirements, which will identify the necessary resources to overcome challenges and take advantage of opportunities, and will be a model for change management that effectively guides the community in actions toward a successful, resiliently enduring future.

Five E's can effectively resolve your group's conflicts through our diverse experience with dispute resolution processes. But we firmly believe it requires a civic critical mass of stakeholder involvement and personal change because the level of consciousness that caused the conflict is not the level of consciousness that we will focus upon to help you resolve it.

We Can Assist You:

• by reframing your group's understanding of the issues related to the conflict or dispute;
• by maintaining the dignity of each individual involved;
• by resolving group conflicts in a way that will lead to more sustainable lifestyles; and
• by facilitating the conflict to its natural conclusion, a shared vision of a sustainable future toward which to build, that is fully committed to by all parties.

Through its design of project-specific facilitation and mediation approaches, Five E's Unlimited helps stakeholders and jurisdictions arrive at authentic choices and consensus-based solutions. We develop an assessment of present circumstances and then help clients find common-ground, long-term solutions by evaluating, articulating, and clarifying crucial controversies and identifying strategies to advance identified objectives.

Our application of the “Art of Complex Problem Solving” (from Marshall Clemens’ Indiagram Art of Insight and Action), helps groups look beyond solving problems one at a time, to the development and understanding of systems that prevent problems from re-occurring or perhaps ever occurring in the first place.

Likewise, we have found that an intentional participatory process involving all stakeholders can lay the groundwork for a shift from conventional jurisdictional management to adaptive, learning-based co-management, supported by what we like to call “Citizen Science” – the public-way-of-knowing balanced with the expert-way-of-knowing. This is evidenced in our work in Guemes Island (WA), Bayfield (WI), and Rathlin Island (Northern Ireland).

Check out our different facilitation and mediation projects and discover what we can do for you.