As a facilitator you have a special role to play. The word facilitate means "to make things easy" As a facilitator, you are not a teacher, you are not a leader. Your job is to organise the workshop and make it easy for the participants to contribute actively! As well as introducing new knowledge and practical skills, your job is to give the participants the opportunity to share their own ideas, knowledge and experience with each other.

With this in mind, here is some advice:

A good facilitator/trainer is always well prepared, but also flexible. As a facilitator you have a programme well planned, but you are always willing to change if you realise that the participants have other important needs or wishes. You will take the time it takes to discuss questions that are important to the participants before you decide to follow your own plan or to change.

A good facilitator/trainer is well informed, but you do not have to know it all. It might be a good strategy to throw some questions back to the audience in order to have their views, rather than pretending that you have all the answers. 

A good facilitator is open, tolerant and a good listener. If you are willing to accept critical comments and suggestions you will have a much better relationship with the participants. And it will hopefully lead to a better workshop. Make sure you ask for feedback and reflections throughout the workshop; do not wait till the final evaluation at the end. This will give you a chance to adjust the programme before it is too late.

You will be using Brainstorming as a method in this workshop. Remember the basic rule: Never allow anyone to comment on the ideas that are presented during the first stage of a brainstorming! Encourage the participants by commenting all suggestions in a positive way and write everything on the flipchart.  A brainstorming is used to give participants space to come up with all kinds of ideas without thinking whether it is realistic/stupid/serious or not. Very often a "stupid idea" may lead to a serious realistic idea. When people feel relaxed and safe creative ideas might come up Do not let the group stop the creative flow! When there are no more ideas, then it is the time to discuss and prioritise the ideas and choose the ones you like.

There should always be two trainers/facilitators who share the tasks between them. Two trainers can share responsibility and support each other. The main trainer leads the activities, the co-trainer is in charge of the practical tasks and gives feed back on performance afterwards, Change roles after a while or each day. Make sure you agree in advance what role you will be playing.

You might also want to involve some of the young participants in the facilitation to give them some training in being in front of a group.