Belarus

[Harrison Owen]

Well Done! Not that I would expect anything less from Jo. But it is always
such a remarkable pleasure to hear of exploits in lands where space doesn't
get opened very often. The Human Spirit is indeed a remarkable critter. It
seems that the more it is repressed the more impressive and luxuriant the
blossoms. Hardly poetic, but seems to be true. And Jo -- I am glad they let
you in. I think that may have been a mistake. :-)

Harrison

Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland   20854
Phone 301-365-2093
Skype hhowen
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com 
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website www.ho-image.com 
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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Jo Toepfer
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 5:06 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Belarus

Dear colleagues,

after 5 years of being 'persona non grata' I got a visa again and was 
able to travel to Minsk where I arrived last Saturday (the same day 
as the president of the country was swearing in to his third term in 
office after the criticized elections last month). I came here not 
only to work with Open Space but to conduct an Open Space training 
for some 30 folks from different walks of life interested in the method.

First surprise: It happened that I met Sergey here in Minsk. He is 
working with OS since some years. He read all Harrison's books, has 
facilitated some 10 events in different areas, is in contact with 
Raffi and plans to come to Moscow. He helped me very much with the 
training and helped to facilitate and sometimes translate some bits. 
We worked together in a brilliant way. Clearly a person that one 
would not expect to meet with in Belarus.

The training did what you may expect - it worked: spirit showed up, 
went on a journey through confusion, conflict and chaos and arrived 
at peace. Here some milestones of the journey:

morning day 1
break, welcome by the sponsor, planning meeting for the first OS with 
creating the theme and finding the sponsor. The theme "How can we 
organize seminars and trainings more effectively?"

afternoon day 1
Complete Open Space with welcome by the sponsor, introduction (my 
part in 16 minutes in Russian), 3 break-out sessions, evening news. 
We saw 27 issues posted, 16 reports made it into the book.

morning day 2
Break, morning news, reading the book, outlook, action planing, 
closing circle. 10 action steps were designed.

afternoon day 2
Open Space on Open Space with welcome by the sponsor (one of the 
wonderful ladies from the group), introduction by Sergey,  2 
break-out session, reading the reports at the gallery (and later this 
afternoon copied as part two of the book) and closing circle. 10 
issues posted and 7 reports were created.

The training was wrapped up with a little conversation in the circle 
called "press conference". The opportunity to clarify remaining 
questions. I assume the intention of this exercise was to reduce 
confusion but the opposite happened :-)

The whole training activity was accompanied with: OS library, cinema, 
audio station, cyber space, self-organized Questions & Answer wall.

What I understood here in Belarus is that we all can learn a great 
lesson in "Muddling through" from the people here. It is amazing how 
people navigate their organizations through the mess of bureaucratic 
and political barricades and are still alive and even enjoying this. 
Regardless to the very unfavorable political climate for any kind of 
self-organized citizen initiative people are doing it anyway.

greetings from Belarus
Jo






Jo Toepfer, boscop eg
Dolziger Str. 40, 10247 Berlin
++49-30-42018000
www.boscop.de  www.joconsult.de  

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