Ethnoarts Competencies
We're still working on this section of the site, so some links may be inactive, or information may be missing. Some areas where content is missing are highlighted in yellow. If you need help with consultant competencies in the meantime, please contact arts@sil.org.
Make a copy of the Competency Assessment Template and Growth Plan Template to fill in and discuss with your mentor:
Competency Categories
The buttons below will take you to the competencies within each category.
About the competency system
The CBC Competency Manager (CBC for short) is a competency-based certification web-based tool. Mentors and mentees use the tool to assess, put together and manage a mentee’s consultant development program. This website accompanies the tool and provides additional information to guide mentors and mentees as they use CBC. You can learn more about CBC here.
General Competencies
Altogether, there are 44 competencies for those specializing in ethnoarts. 25 of these competencies are considered General Competencies that all consultants, regardless of their specialization, are expected to develop. The remaining 19 competencies are specific to those specializing in ethnoarts.
The competencies are further divided into Competency Groups and Target Categories.
More information on the General Competencies can be found on the SIL Training Website.
Within CBC, there is a system for evaluating competency:
0 - No Competency
1 - Has knowledge about the competency
2 - Can do the competency with assistance
3 - Can do the competency independently.
Ethnoarts Competencies
We suggest activities to help mentees move from one level to another. Mentors and mentees should not feel limited to these activities and are free to come up with other ones. We also suggest various resources for each competency, which are listed in the CBC website as well as on ethnoarts.sil.org. If you come up with additional activities, or find good resources, please let us know so that we can consider adding them. Write to arts@sil.org.
Each major category of ethnoarts competencies has a page listing the competencies, some general information about it, and some recommended resources and activities to get you started. You can find them in the menu at the top, or to the right:
Mentoring
The development pathway is highly dependent on an effective mentoring relationship(s) where the Consultant-in-Training (as mentee) meets regularly with their mentor(s), to assess their needs, identify areas for development, specify activities to meet these development needs, and spend time reflecting on practice. Some Consultants-in-Training (CiTs) will have just one mentor throughout their training pathway, others will have more than one, covering the different skills and specialties they wish to develop.
What is a Consultant?
Consultants and consultancy varies depending on the situation and person. For many years, especially in the business sector, a consultant was considered the ‘expert’ and somebody who was paid to provide answers and advice within a given situation. Over time this model of consultancy has been adapted and added to, such that today a consultant often embodies several different roles and approaches, from expert to mentor to coach. Today’s consultant is as much a facilitator, supporting and guiding others (organizations, communities and individuals) as they attempt to meet their goals using the knowledge and resources they have while also offering specialist advice and support, not just an expert advising others of what to do in a given situation.