Fátima D. Gigante – The Facilitators

As a conservation biologist by training, my professional career started from a profound love for the natural world and a desire to take care of it, so that future generations can also benefit from the sense of purpose and belonging that nature can give us. However, when I started taking my first steps into the conservation space, I realized that protecting nature was not only about wildlife, ecosystems, or landscapes, but also about working with people and understanding how they relate to nature.

Biodiversity conservation is a highly conflictive endeavour, and I soon realized that my greatest joy was relating to, understanding, and working with people, and that my greatest wish was to help transform those conflicts so that humans and nature could coexist. That’s the first time I crossed paths with the concept of facilitation and discovered how powerful it could be not only for social change, but also for environmental change (because, as much as we may have forgotten it, humans cannot thrive without a healthy environment).

Since then, I have been attending trainings here and there to continue growing my skills as a facilitator, with the dream of being able to bring people together and help them find solutions to the social and environmental challenges we are facing. I believe my natural talents lie more on the interpersonal side of things, and I want to utilize them to the best of my ability to create positive change in our societies, so that we can thrive together with the nature that hosts us.

I have crossed paths with many facilitators that I deeply admire, and I have seen how powerful facilitation can be, and how transformative group gatherings become when there is intentional, caring, and compassionate facilitation behind them. I want to be one of those people consciously weaving facilitation into group meetings, gatherings, and events, because I want more people to experience its impact.

Experience

Languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish

Event Types: Accelerator, Conference, Offline, Online, Panel, Training, Workshop

Audiences: Adults (36–64), Third or Fourth Sector, Young adults (20–35 y/o)

Certificates: CXC In-Person Facilitation Training

Thematic Areas

Peer-learning program design and facilitation
Mentorship program design and facilitation
Online workshop and webinar design and facilitation
Youth empowerment and capacity building
Women’s leadership development
Community weaving and community architecture
Conflict transformation in the environmental space