Our Services

We provide education and insights, facilitate difficult conversations, align resources, and manage complexity so you can focus on what you do best. While each service stands alone, they’re designed to work together.

Services Designed to Work Together

  • Training & Capacity Building lays the foundation by building mutual understanding so all parties can engage from a position of knowledge and strength.
  • Strategic Facilitation & Mediation activates that understanding by creating space for difficult conversations, balancing power, and moving stakeholders from conflict to alignment.
  • Multi-Partner Project Coordination turns alignment into action by coordinating the complexity across project partners, keeping things on track, and ensuring a smooth hand-off.

three ways to create change


Training & Capacity Building

Knowledge is power. We provide customized, interactive training that builds mutual understanding across sectors.
Here is a sampling of our training catalog:

How to Participate in Utility Decision-Making Processes
Local Government 101: Who Does What and How to Get Involved
Prop What? Using Cost-Benefit Analysis and Other Tools to Evaluate Ballot Measures
From Conflict to Conversation: How to Address the Elephant in the Room and (Re)Build Trust
From Idea to Implementation: How to Design Solutions with Staying Power
Decoding Tech: How to Engage the Public on Technical Projects Without Sounding Like a Robot


Strategic Facilitation & Mediation

Some conversations need professional facilitation. When power dynamics are complex, emotions are high, or stakes are significant, you need someone who can create space for genuine exchange and translate conversations into action plans.

Feedback and listening sessions for public services, plans, or projects
Strategic planning and meeting support
Coalition building or stakeholder group meetings
Community engagement for development projects


Multi-Partner Project Coordination

Even when stakeholders align, different timelines, mandates, reporting requirements, and decision-making processes make coordinating across sectors complex. We coordinate the complexity so you can focus on what you do best.

Strategic partner identification and alignment
Professional project management (timelines, deliverables, reporting)
Cross-stakeholder communication and coordination
Grant administration and capital coordination
Risk management and issue resolution
Succession planning that ensures continuity and long-term success
I’m very passionate about capacity building and a restorative approach. We’re not just trainers or community engagement practitioners in the traditional sense, but community builders. We focus on filling gaps with the underlying assumption that people are inherently capable. Ultimately, New Bayou aims to build bridges and elevate others so that there’s not a small contingency acting on behalf of the whole, but an array of people representing different perspectives who are knowledgeable, can communicate effectively across differences, and have access to resources and systems to create solutions that resonate with them.
Mary C Palmer, Founder & Managing Director

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