Open Space in Oral Cultures

[Michael Herman]

bernd,

see engle, john.
http://www.globalchicago.net/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000007.html

for 'opening space without the props - with non-readers/writers in
haiti'

m



WB-TrainConsult wrote:

> 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
>
> -----
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--

Michael Herman
300 West North Avenue #1105
Chicago IL 60610
312-280-7838 voice
312-280-7837 fax

http://www.michaelherman.com
...an invitation.

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