The Barefoot Guide Connection
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  • Home
  • Writing School
    • Online Stories of Change Writing Class
  • Download the Guides
    • Barefoot Guide 1 - Organisation Development >
      • BFG1 العربية
      • BFG1 Bahasa
      • 漢語
      • BFG1 English
      • BFG1 Español
      • BFG1 Português
      • BFG1 Français
      • BFG1 KiSwahili
    • Barefoot Guide 2 - Learning Organisation >
      • BFG2 Français >
        • BFG 2 Manuel complémentaire Guide Barefoot 2
      • BFG2 English
      • BFG2 KiSwahili
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      • BFG2 Việt
    • Barefoot Guide 3 - Transforming Health Systems
    • Barefoot Guide 4 - The Real Work of Social Change >
      • Barefoot Guide 4 English >
        • BFG4 Writeshop
      • Barefoot Guide 4 Français
    • Barefoot Guide 5 - Mission Inclusion >
      • Barefoot Guide 5 - English
      • Barefoot Guide 5 - Français
      • Barefoot Guide 5 - Kiswahili
    • Barefoot Guide 6 - Generative Leadership
    • Barefoot Guide - Surviving COVID-19 >
      • Barefoot Guide - Surviving COVID-19: The Neglected Remedy
      • Le mini-guide Terre a Terre - Survivre COVID-19: le Remede Neglige
      • Sobreviviendo COVID-19 en MexicoO
    • Barefoot Guide Whole Landscapes
    • Barefoot Guide - Practices of Collaboration >
      • Guide Pieds Nus - pratiques de collaboration
      • Guía Descalza - Prácticas de Colaboración
      • Barefoot Guide - Practices of Collaboration
    • Barefoot Guide 10 - My Food is African >
      • Barefoot Guide 10 - My Food is African
      • Barefoot Guide 10 - Je mange Africain
    • Barefoot Guide 11 - The Climate Emergency
    • Barefoot Guide 12 - Healing Congregations
    • Embracing Practices of Inclusion
    • Buy a hard copy
  • By Languages
    • العربية
    • Kiswahili
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    • Português
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  • Illustrations
    • BFG1 Illustrations
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    • BFG3 Illustrations
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    • BFG 7 Illustrations
    • BFG 8 Illustrations
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    • BFG 10 Illustrations
    • BFG 11 Illustrations
    • BFG 12 Illustrations
  • Library
    • Tools and Exercises
    • Readings and Presentations
    • Frameworks
    • Stories of Change
    • Poetry of Change
    • Contribute to the Resource Library
  • About/Contact
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Gain the power ​of the written word. 
​Find your writing voice and learn to use it. Here.
Are you working on positive social change in your community, in your country, in the world? Do you have a story to tell? Do you want others to learn from your  experience?  We can help.

Stories matter, wisdom learned from real experience on the ground matters, new ideas matter and what people want to say matters.  All of these are conveyed through words, and writing takes these words to readers far and wide. It is a powerful medium of social change for sharing, learning and advocacy.

But the people who have the most valuable stories, insights and messages to share are often the least confident to write them down.  We are aiming to change this. Effective writing can be learnt.
​

​Write to us at
  contact@barefootguide.org  

  • A. STORIES OF CHANGE WRITING COURSES

  • B. SUPPORT TO WRITE YOUR OWN PUBLICATIONS

  • C. WRITESHOP DESIGN AND FACILITATION COURSES

  • D. COACHING FOR WRITERS

  • E. PUBLISHING ADVICE AND SUPPORT

  • F. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

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  • A. STORIES OF CHANGE WRITING COURSES
    We run online and face-to-face courses which teach effective writing of various kinds to social change leaders and practitioners. Our particular focus of the writing of stories of change.
    ​
    We can run customised writing courses on demand, either face-to-face or online. Online courses can be broken up and scheduled over several weeks.

    Occasionally we will be advertising public face-to-face and online courses. 
  • B.  SUPPORT TO WRITE YOUR OWN PUBLICATIONS
    Through collective writeshops and support, we can help your team, organisation or community of practice to write your own publications, including new Barefoot Guides. ​

    ​Writing a publication has a number of stages:
    1. Preparation - identifying the purpose and the writers
    2. The Writeshop - gathering for +/- 5 days to design the publication, empower the writers and the editorial team... and begin the writing
    3. Writing the drafts back home - supported online by a coaching editorial team
    4. Editing - where the editors complete and polish the publication
    5. Publishing - illustrating, proofing and layout etc.

    We can support, guide and facilitate you and your editorial team through this whole process. Each process will be unique, depending on how much experience and time you bring.

    If you would like to develop Barefoot Guide based on your practice we can also support you to do that, as we did for Barefoot Guides 3, 5 and 6. 
  • C. WRITESHOP DESIGN AND FACILITATION COURSES
    We will help you to learn how to design and facilitate writeshops for your own organisations.
    ​
    This especially useful for inhouse writing and publication as well as for collaborative learning.  The tools we teach you can be used for enriching and deepening your action learning processes between practitioners or collaborating organisations. 
  • D. COACHING FOR WRITERS
    We offer online coaching support, enabling you to get over your hurdles and shape your writing into something worth reading.
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    We can coach you, one-to-one, through short Skype/Zoom sessions coupled with email feedback and advice.  Highly effective to get those rough drafts to a polished, publishable state.  For stories, case studies, reports, proposals, conference papers etc.
  • E. PUBLISHING ADVICE AND SUPPORT
    ​We offer online editing and advice to enable you to take writing drafts to final publication.

    You have your almost completed drafts but need to take it the last mile to get it into final shape, with contents, acknowledgments, references, an ISBN number, proof-read, layout etc.  We can give advice and guidance and even take on these tasks on your behalf.

    We can also publish appropriate pieces on the Barefoot Guide Connection Website, making it accessible to a wide audience of social change practitioners and organisations. 
  • F. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
    We do continuous research and development of all the approaches and methodologies of the Barefoot Guide Writing School to strengthen writing and dialogue tools for collective learning, sharing and advocacy.
    ​
    When we learn and create together we lay foundations for working together. This element of our practice brings people together to address the growing need to deepen our ability to collaborate through enriching our approaches and methods of collective thinking and learning.  

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Why the Social Change Writing School?

Writing is more than just documenting stories, thoughts or ideas.  The process of writing can reveal the deeper hidden experience and wisdom of people who have never thought they could write for publication.  Writing can be explorative, creative and empowering.

Writing makes experience, thinking and ideas visible not only to the reader but to the writer herself who cannot see it until it lies there on the page.  Collaborative writing makes thinking visible to a group of people in conversation, enriching their learning, co-creativity and collective intention.

With guidance and support, writing enables leaders and practitioners to share their stories and practices for others to learn from. Nine Barefoot Guides, written by hundreds of people in dozens of countries on all continents are proof that this is possible.

Confident and skilled writers are a small minority because people are rarely taught to use writing as the powerful creative thinking and communication tool that it is.  The Barefoot Guide Social Change Writing and Reading School seeks to contribute to changing this in very practical ways.

Our Writing and Reading School offers a range of services that give practitioners access to the methods, practices and resources, that have been developed by the Barefoot Guide Collective over a period of more than twelve years.



​"This unusual and exceptional volume (and series) is hugely accessible yet deeply rooted in solid theory and extensive practice across a wide range of contexts and fields. Expect from it something truly unique in its combination of insight, reflection, experience and highly usable mixed text/visual presentation. It is not "dumbed down."

I have seen it bite as deeply at high academic and professional level as at grassroots community leadership level, an astonishing achievement worth honouring. "

Professor Emeritus Jim Cochrane,
University of Cape Town, South Africa
Barefoot Guides available in  ​العربية    Kiswahili      Español      Bahasa      English     Français      漢語      Português       Việt

WHAT HAVE OTHERS SAID ABOUT THE bAREFOOT gUIDES...

The Barefoot Guides have been the key influences in my life and work… my constant companions in my community and organisational development work. 
Marie Corcoran-tindill, Trainer, Facilitator of community and group processes, Dublin 

The Barefoot initiative is itself an exciting expression of social change. 
Inez Hackenberg, Utrecht University 

As a trained action learning facilitator their guides have helped me work with grassroots communities in Myanmar and Thailand. 
Kevina Maddick, Program Manager at Right To Play, Bangkok 

The Barefoot Guide's transformative process… shows us the way to transcend borders, sectors, limits, to break the silos! 
Vincent Stevaux, ITECO, Bruxelles

Barefoot Guide has been creating phenomenal content for the critical process of experiential reflection at both individual and organizational levels. 
Jesse Chen, Changemakers, Washington 

…a wonderful contribution to open access knowledge, grounded on a great depth of experience and horizontal learning from across the world. 
Samantha Button, East Africa Program Head, Maliasili 

…the Barefoot Guide collection is having a great influence, especially the lives of field workers and communities. 
Muta Wakilu Tamasco, Ghana 

The Barefoot Guide Connection has a unique and truly transformational approach to collaboration, learning and facilitating social, transformational change across borders. 
Tobias Troll Director, EDGE Europe at EDGE Funders Alliance, Bruxelles 


This unusual and exceptional volume (and series) is hugely accessible yet deeply rooted in solid theory and extensive practice across a wide range of contexts and fields. Expect from it something truly unique in its combination of insight, reflection, experience and highly usable mixed text/visual presentation. It is not "dumbed down." I have seen it bite as deeply at high academic and professional level as at grassroots community leadership level, an astonishing achievement worth honouring. 
Professor Jim Cochrane Cape Town 

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