Opening space for action

Tue Feb 10 10:42:51 PST 2009

Thanks much, Diane for your this detailed answer. I appreciate the time and energy you put in this.
Actually this initiative of working with the Israeli Ministry of Education with all its sectors have started Tova Averbuch and Avner Haramati, and they have been working on this for the last year with different groups. It will be the first time to be working with a formal public system such as the Ministry with the Arab sector (in Arabic). Luckily Avner will be facilitating this process with me. I am sure this opportunity as you mentioned, will create another space where Israelis and Palestinians can cooperate for better future for everyone here.

Thanks again,

Carol

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Diane Gibeault 
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 1:04 AM
  Subject: Re: Opening space for action

  Hi Carol, 

  Here are some suggestions to your question. I am very touched by what you are working at creating with this OS event. I have close friends in Europe who have relatives in Israel and who are themselves in Israel trying to create opportunities for connections between Arabs, Palestinians and Israelis. I have given them information on OST in the past and have sent them your message. They will be encouraged by it I am sure.

  To ''attempt'' to answer your question, here are options on convergence easily done in the 5 hours you have. One of the key decisions you will need to make at the outset if whether you are looking for collective priorities and actions or whether you are satisfied with individuals or small groups of individuals planning action on their own personal priorities.  

  If it's for individual priorities and actions, once people have read reports, you can go directly to opening space this time on an Action theme. People announce, post and work at action plans, individually or they can combine topics with others. 

  If you are aiming for more sustainable collective action, it is worth taking the extra 20 minutes to have the group set its collective priorities with a survey (or if they are the final decision makers on this meeting, you can call it a ''vote''). See below how the survey can be done in about 20 minutes. 

  Once the survey is done, you can use the richest method of convergence: opening space again for action ideas - whoever is interested joins to develop action plans and then prepare reports in the Newsroom. With this approach, you can get several action plans addressing different aspects of the same priority. Or you can invite people to regroup around the priority for which they have most passion for, recognizing that bumble bees can still move around. This makes for bigger groups (if your attendance is of 200 or more) and you are likely to get one plan on an area the group felt was key for a 1st step and possibly a list of quick actions and ideas of other potential actions.

  People regroup in the circle. Group representatives are given Action plans are  for then report in about

  I like to also give time in the closing circle (3-5 min) for personal action plans. If you have an extra 10 min, the plans can be even shared in pairs before the closing of the event. Everybody can find their space in some form of action. People have often told me that this moment was a crucial moving point for them.

  This survey can be done with low tech methods such as:

  - giving each participant tickets (eg. 5) asking them to put one in each of the envelopes attached to the reports that represent their top 5 priorities. This methods avoids peer pressure and group think that sticky dots can create but it's the same principle.  It takes only 2-3 minutes even with a group of 200 or 400 because people have already read the reports and made their choice as they read.  They even combined identical reports where applicable with the consent of initiators of that report topic. The facilitator gave them instructions to that effect before they started reading.

  -When they are done, combinations are announced (helps to spot wrongfully created combinations - political reasons have shown to get in the way at times).  

  -Then volunteers are invited to count tickets (2 volunteers per report, not their own, if outcomes are critical).

  -Facilitator asks if a report received all possible points (same no as no of participants) and goes down until the top 5 or more priorities are identified.  

  I hope this sketch of a process is useful,

  Diane

  From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Carol Daniel Kasbari
  Sent: 9 février 2009 15:58
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
  Subject: [OSLIST] Opening space for action

  Dear friends and colleagues,

  Greetings from Jerusalem!

  I will be opening space for about 200 people next week, on the issue of the Arab education system in Israel, and what contribution each one can make to make it better. It will be a two day event, in which the first day will be mainly for conversation and dialogue on the issue and the second  will focus on action planning and team work. I was wondering if you could share with me the different ways for opening space for action (for the second day), how to do, what to use, especially that I have about 5 hours only for that, and people are very eager to get to work on some projects/ plan next steps together. What would be the ultimate way according to your experience to conduct that?

  I appreciate your help on that, and looking forward to hear you ideas.

  Carol Daniel Kasbari

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