OS in oral cultures - long

WB-TrainConsult wb-trainconsult at gmx.net
Thu Sep 19 07:06:12 PDT 2002


John, (and the others participating in this thread)

thank you for being "long" in your writing.

Oh, I am not at all in a hurry. I started asking the list before
beeing in any situation of urgency. I want to use the time to get a
maximum of discussion and thinking and understanding.

My OD-tandem-partner decided this morning that he/they WILL go for
it:

Having "or(igin?;-)al OS events" as a basic element of community
development work complementary with and probably integrative for the
local approaches used up to now (e.g. participatory rural appraisal
and animacao rural).

So the project will perhaps sponsor a first small "Oral OS Event"
(maybe facilitated already by my tandem-partner) in december, where
the central question could be something like "What can we, the
Community Development facilitators of the project and of the
land-issue specialized NGO, do to build strong external-internal
tandems with our animators (from the communities) in preparation of
good ways to support the communities then in their own visioning
processes".

(They should then e.g. in a methodological follow up also be
confronted with the question of how to prepare and follow up OST
events, which are aspects they did not yet deal with)

And then at the beginning of the next year  probably starting the
preparation of a series of more or less parallel openings of spaces
in communities in two of the Rural Development Program's focus
districts of Sofala, by creating preparation groups (convened by the
CD-tandems and with participation of some of the villagers especially
the chiefs) who could be sporadically coached by our tandem...
(In fact I will be surprised, that is the only thing, which is
shure).
---------

This was my part of the "morning news", now some reactions to your
email:

"nothing written at all to make shure that noone felt alienated"
YES! But nothing against foot prints (Chris' style), bumble-bees'
pictures etc. at the walls. What do you think?

I would like to (let them) do a skit. Even if that is not a necessary
(minimum) ingredient, as your experience shows.

Great approach by the law firm! I have not yet heard from law firms,
who have an understanding of social embedding of their juristic
intervention.

Haitian criolo? No idea. I just know one sentence: "Papa Legba abri
paie pu moi!" I learned criolo berdiano (at Cape Verde Islands)
though from '94-00', but their word inventory is mainly portuguese.

I can imagine what you write about feeling inadequate, beeing and
staying in a very  different day-to-day context (I suppose), having a
history so different from theirs (that is shure). Although having
this feeling is an indicator of not beeing inadequate, of course, but
this, on the other hand, is no argument against feeling.

"I had been meeting with 12 of these women regularly for 6 months
before we did the open space meeting".

So this was mainly to get the right people informed, sensibilized and
activated to the OS?
In my case this aspect seems to be different. When there is a
decision of a Community to have a Open Space to open their
collaboration with the project/program with the intention to start a
Community Development process by a Community Visioning Process, then
everybody of the community will be invited to participate in the
OS-event, right?

((crazy Development-Speak, I mean the community develops permanently
with or without external inputs, isn't it? Asking people to produce
visual lifelines (Weisbord-Style) of District Development when I came
here to Mozambique I learned that this is always the case, only
during the civil war there was nothing they could refer to as beeing
part of a "District Development" process.))

"No pushing to converge..." yes.

What I did here at the end of the first OST events in Mozambique, and
people liked it and did not interprete it as pushing was my question:
'Looking at the results of all the groups (now it would be 'recalling
all the results in mind') which of the proposed actions would have a
positive effect to one ore more of the others and which negative
side-effects can be perceived by any of the other groups?'

I did such a 'systemic convergence' after or without a classical one
(priorization by sticking dots) having finally a nice concept-map of
the +/- interactions between the inteded actions, which led sometimes
to a re-priorization (e.g. there were stronger effects of the actions
for AIDS preventions or against malnutrition in the communities to
nearly all the other projects than people had thought before looking
at the OS group-results in such a systemic way.

Even without graphics, I think it could be a good question to produce
more information for action.

"or to be too interventionary". Perhaps it would be...

As to french: je me debrouille, although portuguese supresses my
french badly.

All this is great learning for me, thank you all!

Bernd


-----
wb-trainconsult at gmx.net 19.09.2002 at 14:23:49 (GMT/UT + 02:00)

On Wed, 18 Sep 2002 16:44:43 -0400, john engle wrote:
>dear bernd,
>
>sorry that it has taken me some time to get back to you. i've been
>traveling.
>
>last month i did another open space meeting with a group of people,
>most of whom do not read and write. we decided to have no signs,
>nothing written to make sure that noone felt alienated.
>
>this time, i had noone else with me who was familiar enough with
>open space and who could help me to communicate the principles and
>law by doing a skit.
>i just simply explained them as clearly as i could in their native
>language-haitian creole. they did just fine. subjects were
>presented-lots!-and people sub-divided in groups throughout the day.
>
>the group was 35 woman and 5 children. the woman are victims of the
>haitian military during the coup years in '93. they were raped,
>beaten in most cases imprisoned and some watched as family members
>were killed. some have aids as a result and some are raising
>children that were born from rape.
>
>there is an international law firm that is working to bring the
>perpetrators to justice and they invited me to help the women to
>become more organized together and skilled in communicating in
>public.
>
>as you can imagine, i feel so inadequate with group such as this.
>its like when i work with kids who have lived on the streets of port
>au prince. i can't begin to imagine the pain and suffering that they
>have experienced. i can only be present with them. open space,
>listen, and support them.
>
>i had been meeting with 12 of these women regularly for 6 months
>before we did the open space meeting. there objective was to reach
>out to other woman who had been raped and to attempt to integrate
>them into their efforts. they were pleased with this one day event.
>one result of the day is another day of open space scheduled in
>november.
>
>keep in mind, everyone involved with this group of woman knows that
>things are going to take time. for me to push to converge or to be
>too interventionary in any way would be ridiculous. they seem to
>find tremendous strength and encouragement when they simply come
>together. i simply try to take care of the logistics to make it
>possible for them to come together, open space, am mostly silent in
>the large circle, and always am trying to affirm their process,
>which is often chaotic, slow, and the furthest thing from smooth.
>
>....when it comes to being with people who have histories so very
>different than my own, which includes not knowing how to read and
>write, the laws of spirit seem to be particularly important:
>
>1. show up and be present 2. tell the truth without blame or
>judgement 3. follow what has heart and meaning 4. let go of
>attachment to outcome
>
>bernd, would be great if you could come to the haiti open space on
>open space june 20-23, 2003. we would love to have you. do you by
>chance speak french? i also will be unable to go to osonos in
>australia, regretfully. i will be in israel/palestine in november.
>
>sincerely,
>
>john
>
>
>http://www.beyondborders.net/experiment.htm
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Discutez en ligne avec vos amis ! http://messenger.msn.fr
>
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