OS and World Cafe at a Community Meeting in Monrovia, Liberia

Mon Mar 28 16:34:58 PDT 2011

Last Saturday my partners and I hosted over 120 community leaders at an Open
Space Community Meeting here in Monrovia, Liberia.  My small non profit,
Global Citizen Journey, in partnership with the Liberian organization,
Population Caring Organization, are launching the Liberia Peacebuilder
Initiative to help grow a network of leaders that cut across all of the many
divides here:  traditional, Christian, Muslim; 16+ ethnic groups; men/women;
youth/elders; educated/illiterate; ex-combatants; returning refugees.  We
have recruited 35 leaders from the Interfaith Council of Churches, Tribal
Elders Council, National Council of Tribal Governance, and several NGOs plus
the Kofi Annan Graduate school of Peace Studies.  These 35 received a 5 day
training in Compassionate Listening, Restorative Circles, Trauma Healing,
Forgiveness & Reconciliation – and I will return in 2 months to continue
this train-the-trainer program.  One of the components they will learn is
how to facilitate Open Space and World Café, so they will have these
powerful tools to share with their communities and bring their groups
together in dialogue.  To introduce them to this practice, they were invited
to attend with their invited guests to a Community Meeting last Saturday
with the convening question, 

“It’s up to us – you and me.  We have challenges and opportunities.

What can we do now to begin to create the Liberia that works for all of us”

For this first week, I was accompanied by a group of students and two
professors from Salem State University (in Massachusetts) – led by Dr. Greg
Carroll, chair of the Intercultural and Peace studies program there – and we
offered a 3 day training to the Salem students plus students from the Kofi
Annan School of Peace Studies at the University of Liberia.  

For the community meeting, we started the morning with a World Café – to
help connect everyone across the diverse groups present in the room – and to
begin giving them the experience and skill of dialogue, i.e. each person
having a turn to have their voice heard, each person listening to one
another, weaving together thoughts into a dialogue – vs. their usual habit
of orating, with each speaker giving their own little speech without
connection to the speaker before or after.  We had three rounds with these
questions:

Round 1) What do you love about Liberia?

Round 2) What keeps us from making Liberia what we want it to be?

Round 3) How can we begin to work together to make these ‘better Liberia’
dreams come true?

Before we began the first round, we had everyone move around so they would
be in a circle that included men  and women and people they didn’t know.
This took a while, but with help from the Salem students and PCO staff, we
got them into the small groups of 4.  I introduced and explained the use of
a talking object (we had stones picked up at their beautiful beaches).
After I explained in my US English, a local party translated into the local
vernacular creole (“everybody talk small small time with ‘talking object-o’
and listen each other-o”).  Still, there was clear lack of understanding –
this was out of everyone’s experience – so we went around to each group to
help them get it:  so someone would actually pick up their talking object
and begin – and pass it around, no cross talk
  It was fascinating to see
how –by the third round—everyone in the room had caught on to the idea – and
the groups were fully engaged, one round with the talking object, then
really juicy and connected/coherent conversation
  We had a great debrief
and discussion
  Then we moved into a large double circle and I introduced
Open Space – so thrilled to tell them how it was really coming back home to
them – since Harrison Owen learned so much from Liberia (where he was the
head of Peace Corps) that he wove into the process

They were very responsive to step right up and offer topics
 After creating
the market place, we had lunch with some fabulous Liberian drumming and
dancing
 and then moved into the first session. Again, it took a while  for
them to really understand how they could move from session to session – and
how they could choose a session to attend – not just their own topic!  But
by ~15-20 minutes into it, everyone was fully engaged in a topic of their
choice

For the Open Space, 26 topics were generated:

1.	How can we bring fair justice in Liberia to make peace
2.	Living as an ambassador of genuine peace
3.	How to resolve land dispute
4.	Creating peace among learners
5.	Conflict Resolution
6.	How can we reconcile?
7.	What is the future after 2011 elections?
8.	How can we build peace in Liberia?
9.	Peace begins with us
10.	Culture into education
11.	Improvement of education sector
12.	Good working relationship
13.	What you can do to bring above peace?
14.	What it takes to be a community leader?
15.	Peace brings unity
16.	National reconciliation
17.	Forgive one another
18.	How to avoid bad governance
19.	How can Salem State University help Liberia?
20.	Methods of building peace
21.	Promoting peacebuilding implementations @ workplaces/ schools &
Universities/ communities/ churches/ government & institutions
22.	Democracy & good governance, leadership with integrity to have a
peaceful environment in Liberia
23.	Peace in the family
24.	Peace in 16 counties
25.	How do we protect the peace we enjoy?
26.	What Liberians stand to benefit should the peace process become
successful?

Since there were no computers available and many people do not write, we had
a helper in each group help create a flipchart with key points discussed and
any action steps identified.  Our Liberian Partners will create a report
that contains much of this information and will disseminate it to each of
the key groups that sent participants.  I’ll keep you posted on outcomes we
hear of.  Though already we heard there was quite a buzz about what a
successful and engaging event it was – and how people are introducing the
idea of circles and talking objects to their communities.

All for now,

Susan 

Susan Partnow

Founding Director, Global Citizen Journey

4425 Baker Ave NW

Seattle, WA 98107

tel. 206-783-8561

fax 206-782-7786

www.globalcitizenjourney.org <http://www.globalcitizenjourney.org/>  

join our mailing list <http://oi.vresp.com/?fid=fb96ddc75f> 

www.susanpartnow.com <http://www.susanpartnow.com/>    Partnow
Communications, Organizational Development, Consulting & Facilitation

www.conversationcafe.org <http://www.conversationcafe.org/>    Co-Founder

www.compassionatelistening.org <http://www.compassionatelistening.org/>
Sr. Certified Facilitator

"When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness.  Our
seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly
necessary we are to each other."  --Margaret Wheatley

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