OST with illiterate participants

Joelle Lyons Everett JLEShelton at aol.com
Wed Sep 29 12:34:55 PDT 2004


Gerard--

You can generally find out in your planning meetings whether there are likely
to be people who do not read and write.   If there are only a few, it does
not need much change in your usual plans--I generally emphasize that the
convenor is not necessarily required to write a report, but that he has the
responsibility to see that a report is written.

In one meeting I facilitated, one woman sat with a pen and paper in her hand
for a long time, and finally had a friend write a poster (she later confided
to me that "my writing is not good.")   She announced and convened her session
around an excellent question.  The director of the organization joined the
small group, and volunteered to take notes on the flipchart.   We had not made
special arrangements for this group, but had discussed in the planning meeting
that there were several nonreaders/nonwriters among the participants.   The
managers were quite surprised when several of these individuals stepped right up
to announce sessions, and they were active participants in many groups.

Both John Engle and Chris Weaver have worked out plans for OS meetings where
many of the participants do not read and write, or where flipcharts are not
readily available.   As I recall, the convenors announce sessions for the first
time slot, participants gather around the convenors instead of signing up on
paper.   The group reconvenes at the beginning of each time period for sessions
to be announcements.   And reports are made orally to the group.

This topic was discussed in the OSONOS at Vancouver in 2001--don't know if
those notes are still available on the openspaceworld.org website.   The topic
has been discussed more recently on the OSList, but I can't give you a date or
title.

I've worked with people who do not read and write in various situations, and
I feel that an Open Space meeting is easier to adapt than many other formats.

Joelle

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