OS and World Cafe at a Community Meeting in Monrovia, Liberia
Chris Corrigan
chris at chriscorrigan.com
Mon Mar 28 18:50:19 PDT 2011
Great story Susan! Thank you for the attention to detail and for sharing it
like this.
Chris
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Susan Partnow <susan4ps at comcast.net> wrote:
> 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
>
> join our mailing list <http://oi.vresp.com/?fid=fb96ddc75f>
>
>
>
> www.susanpartnow.com Partnow Communications, Organizational Development,
> Consulting & Facilitation
>
> www.conversationcafe.org Co-Founder
>
> 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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--
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Facilitation - Training - Process Design
Open Space Technology
Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com
*
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