preparing participants to work creatively in an OS

john engle englejohn at hotmail.com
Fri May 9 12:03:33 PDT 2003


dear raffi,

i have done a fair amount of work with a group of women who are victims of
rape by military during the coup d'etat 91-94. they have suffered other
violence as well, either directly or to family members.

you wrote:
They attend a regular psychosocial rehabilitation group to deal with the
pain,
sorrow they carry.

are the members of this group mentioned above, the same people who are
coming to your open space gathering? seems like this is important. how often
do the meet? are they living close to one another? is it in a refugee camp?

i was invited by an international law firm to help the women i mentioned
above, to become more organized in hopes of bringing their perpetratrors to
justice or toward the victims obtaining reparation. like you, i have been
dealing with a concrete objective apart from addressing their trauma and
pain. nevertheless, the trauma and pain is all part of it.

over and over again, i would hear the women say things like, "if it had not
been for this group and one another, i would have lost my sanity and ended
up living on the streets as an animal." like the women you are dealing with,
they are desperately poor and are dealing with hardships that i cannot begin
to imagine.

with regard to my work with these women, i have more questions than answers.

it is so clear that the women i am working with find great strength and
encouragement when they come together. because of family obligations and
financial constraints, they are not able to come together more than once or
twice a month.

another issue for me is that, while i speak haitian creole-their mother
tongue-fluently, i am not a woman or a haitian. thus, there are numerous
'lines' that keep us from easily identifying with each other. good news for
me is that the law firm hired one of my haitian colleagues, an experienced
open space practitioner, to work with them and other victims groups on a
regular basis.

do all the women you are working with know how to read and write? if not,
would be a good idea to adapt the open space so that non-readers don't feel
the least bit intimidated.

in terms of exercises around creativity and things like that, i have always
avoided them. i am a bit of a purist with open space in general. when it
comes to working with people who have suffered things that are totally
outside of my experience, and people who don't have near the privilege that
i have, i just try to humble myself before them, honoring them by simply
holding space so that they can address what they feel needs to be addressed.

have the women exerienced open space already? if they have not and if they
do not have habits of getting together to address their specific objective
of trying to find self-employment opportunities, i would just do the open
space with them. if they come up with something clear that involves small
business people and ngo directors, organize another meeting. but follow
their clear and collective initiative instead of the opposite extreme of
carrying out yours (by doing an open space meeting) and inviting them along
with others.

also, for what its worth, i attended monthly meetings with the group that i
was working with for about 5 months before proposing anything to them. they
would meet for normally two hours at a time to address various things and i
was just an observer. i requested approaching it in this way. usually at the
end of meetings they would invite me to share any reflections.

don't know if this is helpful or not. forgive me if i have rambled.

john



http://www.beyondborders.net/experiment.htm

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