TIP Blurb by Nancy Hopkins

Training in Paradise is an amazing six-section compendium of Marcia and Denny Hamilton’s world-wide work in participant centered training. The book opens up 40 years of shared experience as they developed a philosophy of best practices for adult learning. With step-by-step examples from projects, workshops, and personal interactions across multiple cultures, countries and educational levels, you will be fascinated wherever you dip into it. Illiterate subsistence farmers, high level government functionaries, first responders, and MBA students, whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East have all learned tools to improve their lives through the techniques of sharing knowledge demonstrated in these six segments.

You can read Training in Paradise as a how-to-manual: How to train those who train others; how to set up a problem solving workshop; how to live in a culture distinctly different from your own; how to develop, manage, monitor and evaluate a social development project; or how to coach skills in life actualization. Or you can read it to enjoy vignettes of life in other countries and cultures--or as a memoir of two ordinary people who chose to live extraordinary lives. However you read Training in Paradise, the openhearted personalities of Denny and Marcia shine through. They have enlivened thousands of people with their work. Read this book. It may transform your life too. Nancy Hopkins 1/22/22

 

Review – Training in Paradise – TIP Compendium by Penelope Poole

This is far more than a textbook. It’s a detailed professional journal that —just like a personal journal— doesn’t cringe from truth, even when it hurts. Marcia and Denny Hamilton have meticulously chronicled their decades long global training career, step-by-step and knock-by-knock. Anyone who reads it with full attention will know they are in the hands of international masters. And on top of its educational value and exacting attention to detail, it’s thoroughly entertaining in its anecdotes from different countries. Anyone with an interest in how the world works, such as those studying international development, would benefit from this book – not only those in the training and facilitation profession.

I had the privilege and honor of working with Marcia in the early days of Training Associates - Philippines (TAP) and the pleasure of knowing the Hamilton family for the common years we were stationed in that wonderful country and maintaining that friendship and contact for nearly 30 years. I’ve participated in ZOPP/GOPP workshops with remarkable facilitators trained by Denny and Marcia and remain astounded at what that system can accomplish when properly executed. Penelope Poole, MA (Former TAP Executive Director)