PARTNERS

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Partners Companion to Training for Transformation

In 2001, to celebrate 20 years of working in Ireland, PARTNERS commissioned Maureen Sheehy to compile the first PARTNERS COMPANION TO TRAINING FOR TRANSFORMATION.

It is a compilation of the exercises, processes and methods designed and used by facilitators over several years and draws mainly from the experience of PARTNERS' workshops in the north and south of Ireland, and in Wales, England, and Scotland. It also draws on the experience of PARTNERS' facilitators who have been associated with DELTA in Eastand Southern Africa, with KOGI and DELES in West Africa, with Training for Transformation in Pakistan, and with Concern America, who promote and are associated with Training for Transformation in Central and North America.

This publication will be of interest to anyone who works with groups in community development, community education, adult education, development education and overseas development informal and non-formal settings.

The content includes exercises, processes and methods for topics such as: facilitation skills; adult learning; listening exercises; leadership; participation; power; roles, social analysis; community; dealing with conflict; culture; refugees; spirituality/soul-time and much more.

PARTNERS' manual has been produced to complement, rather than repeat, what is already available in the four Training for Transformation Handbooks, by Anne Hope and Sally Timmel (Training for Transformation Institute, Box 80 Kleinmond, 7195 South Africa; 1999).

PARTNERS' COMPANION TO TRAINING FOR TRANSFORMATION is available from the PARTNERS' office priced at €22.00 plus postage. For a copy, please ring PARTNERS on 01-6673440 or email partners@eircom.net.

Partners Intercultural Companion to Training for Transformation

For several years Partners Training for Transformation has been gathering and developing resources, and engaging in intercultural work and training with communities, organisations and groups in Ireland and elsewhere. This book is the fruit of our work and we are happy to offer it as a resource to others engaged in similar work.

It is a compilation of the exercises, processes resources and reflections designed, developed or adapted and used by facilitators over several years and draws mainly from the experience of PARTNERS' work in Ireland, Wales, England, Scotland and in a European Grundtvig Learning experience. It also draws on the experience of PARTNERS' facilitators who have been associated with Training for Transformation programmes in several African and Asian countries and with Concern America, who promote and are associated with Training for Transformation in Central and North America.

Reclaiming Economics – A Cooperative Inquiry (2005)

This publication has its origins in a series of conversations about economics between Partners and Community Action Network. Our collective experience was that while community development and community education helped people to become politically, socially and culturally aware and active, engagement with the subject of economics seemed to leave people feeling mystified and powerless.

We initiated a cooperative inquiry called Reclaiming Economics with the aim of creating processes and resources which would enable individuals, groups and communities to explore their own experience of, reflect on and creatively engage with the economic realities which are central to their own lives.

This publication results from this inquiry and is both a report and a resource. It is an account of what happened during the inquiry, the background thinking and the processes, exercises and resources designed for and during the inquiry.

This publication will be of particular interest to anyone who works in formal or non-formal settings with groups involved in community development, community education, adult education, development education and overseas development. It will also be of interest to those whose lives or work situations involve a significant intercultural dimension.

The content includes exercises, processes, resources and reflections for topics such as understanding culture, identity and culture, racism, culture and communication, cultural values, development interventions, power, language and many other areas of intercultural work.

This resource book has been produced to add to what is already available in Partners’ companion to Training for Transformation (2001) and in the four Training for Transformation Handbooks, by Anne Hope and Sally Timmel (Training for Transformation Institute, Box 80 Kleinmond, 7195 South Africa; 1999). PARTNERS' INTERCULTURAL COMPANION TO TRAINING FOR TRANSFORMATION is available from the PARTNERS' office priced at €25.00 plus postage. For a copy, please ring PARTNERS on 01-6673440 or email partners@eircom.net.

PHOTOSPEAK – designed and produced by Partners in Faith

A pack of 74 black and white photographs for use with Community groups, youth groups, literacy groups, development groups, Senior citizens, parish groups, faith sharing groups, newly-formed groups, management training, personal development, counselling, story-telling…

Designed and produced by Partners in Faith Trust
To order: ring 01-4535348
or write to Partners in Faith
72 St. Anthony’s Rd Rialto Dublin 8
or email (with your address) to partnersinfaith@eircom.net

RESOURCES

3 Exercises from Partners Companion to Training for Transformation

This exercise raises awareness and gives practice in listening not only to the facts in a conversation but also to the feelings surrounding the facts. It is particularly useful for a team who is planning to do a listening survey.

Procedure

1. Divide into groups of 3. Each group letters themselves off – A, B and C.
2. A is asked to speak for a 2 - 3 minutes on a topic that they have strong feelings about e.g. something they feel angry about, or feel very excited about. While A is speaking, B listens to the facts of what A is saying and C is listening to the feelings A is expressing.
3. B gives feedback to A on the facts heard; C gives feedback on the feelings heard. ‘A’ responds saying whether or not the feedback is accurate.
4. The exercise is then repeated with B speaking and with C listening for facts and A listening for feelings. Feedback is again given.
5. Finally C speaks and A listens for facts and B for feelings. Feedback follows again.
6. Each triad discusses how the exercise was for them, what they learned from it and whether it was easier to listen to facts or to feelings..
7. The whole group comes together and there is an opportunity to share the insights participants had during the exercise. If it hasn’t already been covered it may be useful for the facilitator to ask “which did you find it easier to listen to, facts or feelings?” Most people have an ease with one over the other, so it is useful to draw out any insights participants may have on the implications of their preference, and the part they are least comfortable with.

Time 1 - 11/2 hours

The aim of the exercise is to see how leadership, communication and participation happen in teams.

Procedure

Before the exercise begins, the facilitator constructs a “sculpture” made from different colour drinking straws in a separate room. The large group is divided into teams of five or six people and each team is given the same task. They must complete an exact replica of the sculpture in twenty minutes. To do the task, each team is given the exact number of straws of each colour needed. They can move freely between the two rooms, but the original sculpture must not be touched at any time, during the exercise.

After twenty minutes (or so) the exercise ends. Then each team is asked to reflect on the experience with the following questions as guidance -

• How do you feel now that the exercise is over? What other feelings did you have during the exercise?
• What helped or hindered you in getting the task done?
• How did you relate to one another in the team?
• Was the exercise easy or difficult for you personally? Why?
• If you were doing the exercise again, what might you do differently?
• What have you learned about yourself in a team? Or what have you learned about how teams work, from the exercise?

Each team should be given about twenty minutes to reflect and discuss the above, and then each reports back on their experience in an open forum.

The aim of this exercise is to get the group to reflect on the elements that constitute community, at its best.

Procedure

1. Each person is asked to remember an experience of community they once had, when they said: “Yes, that is what community is really about”. They should be encouraged to remember as many details as possible, as to what made it a positive experience:
   • Who were the people/group involved?
   • Where did it happen?
   • When did it happen?
   • What was it about it that made you say it was a good community?
   • Was there anything else interesting about the situation?
2. Divide the group randomly, into small groups of five people, and ask each person to share their community experience. Allow about half an hour for this, asking groups to make sure that each person gets at least five minutes to share.
3. Then when everyone has shared, ask each group to draw up a list of what they, from their experience, consider to be the five or six essential elements of a good community.
4. Return to large group and invite each small group to present their list. Note what is common, and open the floor for a general discussion.

3 Exercises from Partners Intercultural Companion to Training for Transformation

This exercise aims to enable participants explore the norms about ‘personal space’ in their own and other cultures.

Procedure

1. Participants are asked to form monocultural groups and in those groups to consider the cultural norms about personal space in their own culture. They are invited to do this by considering each of the following sets of people in the suggested scenarios. For each pair in each scenario they should consider the following question - In your culture what are the norms regarding physical closeness or distance?
   
         People
   
   • Two men
   • Two women
   • Woman and man
   • Older and younger person
   
         Scenarios
   
   • On the street
   • In a bus
   • Queuing at a bank/post office
   • In normal conversation
2. Participants are then invited to form mixed cultural groups of 4 and to share with each other what their various norms are regarding each set of people in each scenario.
3. Each group is then asked to choose 2-3 examples from their sharing, perhaps norms that were particularly different or interesting in some way, to present to the rest of the group.
4. All return to the large group and each small group makes its presentation.
5. Finally, some time is given for any comments participants may wish to make before the session ends.

This exercise aims to create opportunities for people to have conversations about issues relating to racism as well as the issue of racism itself. It attempts to do this in a safe way by setting up a number of possible conversations and allowing participants to freely choose which one they would like to take part in.
The possible conversations begin like this:

1st Conversation- “I’m not racist but ………”.

2nd Conversation- “Migration is the history of humanity”.

3rd Conversation- “The moment you include you exclude”.

4th Conversation- “Ethnicity designates or assigns power”.

5th Conversation- “Unpredictability breeds anxiety”.

6th Conversation- “I can’t be racist, I’m black!”

Procedure

1. Each of these statements is written on a poster and the 6 posters are placed in different parts of the room. People then choose which conversation they would like to engage in and go to that place. Participants are given adequate time for a good conversation.
2. After some time participants are invited to move to another poster.
3. To conclude, participants are invited back to the large group to share some of what they talked about and particularly any new insights they may have gained from the conversations.

The aim of this exercise is to raise awareness among participants about power relationships and language use.

Procedure

1. Explain to participants that they will receive a handout with four stories about attitudes towards language. The first story is from a novel by a Nigerian writer, the second concerns the Irish language and the third and fourth are about the languages of Native Americans. The handout below is given and the passages are read aloud.
2. Participants are invited to work in groups of four for 20 minutes. They are asked to read the passages again in the group and to respond to the following questions:
   • What strikes you about these stories and what initial comments would you like to make?
   • What do you see happening in the four passages and why do you think this is happening?
   • Do the passages remind you of any similar experience you or others have had regarding language? Do you see anything like that happening today?
3. When the groups have had a chance to discuss the questions the large group is reconvened and feedback is taken from the groups.
   
4. Then the question is put:
   • In your own context are there languages which are gaining in strength and languages which are growing weak? Name these languages. How do you account for this?
5. Participants may discuss this in pairs and then share with the large group. It would be useful for the facilitator to record the responses so that the whole group is informed and patterns may be observed.

Papa was staring pointedly at Jaja. “Jaja, have you not shared a drink with us, gbo? Have you no words in your mouth?” he asked entirely in Igbo. A bad sign. He hardly spoke Igbo, and although Jaja and I spoke it with Mama at home, he did not like us to speak it in public. We had to sound civilized in public, he told us; we had to speak English.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, (2004) Purple Hibiscus, Fourth Estate: London,

In a work called "A Treatise Containing a Plain and Perfect Description of Ireland" published in 1577 Richard Stanihurst tells a story about a woman in Rome who was possessed by what he called a babbling spirit. This demon-spirit was able to speak all the languages of the world with one exception, Gaeilge (Irish). Stanihurst explains that the Irish language was so coarse, so barbaric, so obscene and so difficult that even the devil was not able to speak it.
Alan Titley (2004) ‘Beir leat do shár Gaeilge!’, Dublin: Coiscéim,

A few years ago, I spent part of a warm afternoon in Tucson, Arizona in conversation with a Native American woman…She had grown up speaking two of the languages of that area, and was just old enough to have attended one of the notorious BIA (Bureau 0f Indian Affairs) boarding schools, which as late as the early 1970s operated a policy of explicit and efficient oppression of Native American languages. She spoke to me of the techniques used in her school to put pressure on the students to abandon the languages they had brought with them from their home communities. Some were brutal and obvious…Others were more subtle – making sure that speakers of the same language had as little opportunity as possible to be together in classrooms and dorms…(and) encouraging traditional animosities among different groups and so on…The message was…you and your community are not good enough for the modern world; we shall remake you in our image.
James McCloskey, (2001) Voices Silenced, Dublin: Cois Life Teoranta, p. 37-38.

In the difference of language today lie two thirds of our troubles…Schools should be established which children should be required to attend; their barbarous dialects should be blotted out and the English language substituted.
1868 United States Federal Commission document about making peace with the Plains Indians.