I have recently licensed my community moderation training package to Cardiff Women’s Aid. As part of this three-year licence, they received an initial training session and feedback on participants practice activities, bespoke training resources and trainer’s notes, a train the trainer Skype session and a draft moderation handbook for their ongoing use. I have also been happy to offer ad hoc suggestions and support around moderation and management as they develop their new online community SHOUT.

SHOUT is for survivors of violence against women in Cardiff and the surrounding areas. The name stands for Surviving through Hope, Openness, Understanding and Trust, with these values as their guiding principles.

I ran the initial training session for seven survivors and the community engagement project worker (who will be running the training in future).

After introductions we covered:

• An exploration of the advantages and disadvantages of online support for both moderators and members.
• An introduction to community moderation – thinking about what it is, what moderators do and how community members might be involved in moderation too.
• Skills for moderation – emotional support and listening online.
• Skills for moderation – using language effectively.
• Skills for moderation – signposting and awareness of barriers to support.
• Using personal experience effectively.
• Community guidelines and managing posts and reports.
• Looking after yourself while moderating.
• Identifying bad practice.

Although we touched on safeguarding and confidentiality, this will be covered in more detail in a further training session run by CWA. In this session, they will also look at the technical side of the community (something that wasn’t finalised at this stage).

I also provided a practice activity that participants could do in their own time for some extra feedback.

It was a great day and the volunteers were all really enthusiastic and engaged. I’m really looking forward to hearing more about how it goes when CWA launch the community in a few weeks.

Clare created fantastic bespoke moderator training and helped us develop our brand-new survivors’ community. She went out of her way to ensure that the training met our needs exactly by engaging in various in-depth discussions and learning about our sector. But beyond that, she also helped us to build our vision for the community and the community guidelines; created an editable handbook for our future use and changing needs as the community grows; and offered ongoing support with tweaking the training as the forum develops.

The training itself was simple to understand but well-rounded and very comprehensive. Our moderators told us they thought the session was very positive, interesting, inclusive and approachable, and that the mix between group discussions and presentation was very helpful.

Clare was great to work with: patient, understanding and thorough. The training she developed and delivered was exactly what we needed. I couldn’t recommend her highly enough.

Venice Fielding – Community Engagement Project Worker – Women’s Aid Cardiff