Open Space in Oral Cultures

WB-TrainConsult wb-trainconsult at gmx.net
Mon Sep 16 07:18:07 PDT 2002


Dear os-list

my client asked me to write this email to the os-list.

I have meanwhile facilitated  several small OST events here in
central Mozambique and started some os-sensibilization and
ost-training (by doing) for community development facilitators of the
Rural Development Program and a national ONG collaborating with them
in land-right issues and I have roughly presented various other
"organization transformative large group facilitation techniques"
(that is my way to speak about the 18++methods) to this group.

They decided, that OST (and Future Search) could play an important
role in a Sofala-Community-Development-Model, which we are about to
construct together at the basis-level of an SIAD-approach (Systemic
Integrated Area Development), which is networking at three levels
I. Community Development (fighting poverty, producing the social
energy)
II. District Development (bundeling and coordinating it)
III. Provincial Level (supporting it)

After having paired the Community Development Facilitators (who are
part of the Rural Area Development Programme) with the Community
Development Animators (who are part of the communities) the next step
would be to realize do help prepare these tandems to open space again
and again in the communties of the focal districts as part of the
community animation/development process.

So there arise several questions related to the one basic question:
"How to realize OST-events in very poor rural communities, where
people have a purely oral tradition?"
that is: they do not write, do not read, have no access to money
(well: less than 0,2 USD/family and day) and technology (well, I saw
portable radios around some necks)?

I discussed it this morning with the internal consultant (JPV). We
are an internal/external OD-consultancy-tandem which is the nucleus
of the OD-consultancy system within the Rural Development Programm.
The next circle of the Development System around us (at
implementation level) are already the Community Facilitators and
their District Coordinators).

JPV said: "It is impossible! How should they write and post the
"temas de paixao"? They can not even write their name! These people
from the 'interior' can not interprete x/y-grids like the time/space
slots of the bulletin board! How can they organize their working
groups without the bulletin board? They can not documentate their
working results! They have no watches! They can not start another
group in one and a half hour! Forget it!"

I said: "Calma! Wait! Describing people as illiterates focuses on
deficits from our point of view. But what is the function of fixing
the themes of the working groups? What is the function of written or
visual documentation? It substitutes mental operations which we, the
non-oral people can not any longer realize. We lost a lot of
complexity of our memories. And the people in the communities would
not be stranger groups. They know each other. So if one of them goes
to the center of the circle and tells them, what he/she wants to do
in the group, there is already a mental framework of reference in
place, they will easily remind which problem this and that guy wanted
to resolve together with others. They are able to manage 20 or 30
person-related items! (I gave examples of tremendous memory acts I
had experienced with illiterate people here)...WE are not! And with
the breakout-room organization it is somehow the same. They all know
their territory, so they will be able to memorize the triples
person-item-space (who-what-where). And since it will start at the
right time and be over when it is over, we have just to install the
basic breathing rhytm of the community. Coming together and breaking
out, coming together and breaking out."

After breathing a little for my-self, I continued: "You know,
Harrison insists that he did not invent but discover OST. And he
speaks of its African roots. And in my interpretation Harrison's OST
with its postings on the bulletin board and its report-system is an
adaptation of a stone-age-time social innovation of feasable
face2face self-organization of communities for people of an
industrialized culture, reminding them of their often forgotten
capacities to self-organize. So why not try to go back to the roots?
I believe, it is possible"

Well, I was in vision-mood and -energy, there and when I said that.
But up to now it is only a deep conviction. So perhaps it is not
true. And perhaps we will not be able to materialize such a vision.

So I am at the point where

I REALLY NEED HELP FROM YOU OUT THERE!

My questions (for now):

1) Should I take the responsibility to invite my client to go for
such a journey?
In other words: is it possible to realize open space with people who
are completely illiterate?

2) Are there practical experiences I can rely on?

3) Wouldn't it be necessary (and great) to make OST even simpler?
(Putting a part of the external instrumentation back into the heads)


Bernd








-----
wb-trainconsult at gmx.net 16.09.2002 at 14:59:39 (GMT/UT + 02:00)
1) attached to this e-mail : No file
2) All attached files are mentioned by name in the lines above.Please
do not open any other attachment!
3) Please send text documents in RichTextFormat/*.rtf, if possible.
This also facilitates communication between the mac- and ms-world.

----
Bernd Weber
Organization Development Consultant

"DEVELOP YOUR CAPACITIES - MATERIALIZE YOUR VISION"


C.P. 1462, Beira, Sofala, MOZAMBIQUE
fone: +258-3-32 98 59, cellfone:+258-82-43 79 77

-----
WB-TrainConsult
management- & human resources
training, consulting & development
-----
Gumpendorfer Straße 88b/18, AT-1060 Wien, AUSTRIA
fone & fax: +431 596 86 57, cellfone: +43 0662 7667872
-----
Inscricao no grupo de discussao "Sistemas organizacionais":
Escrever um email para o endereco <sis-org-subscribe at eGroups.com>

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html



More information about the OSList mailing list