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

Blake Mills mmmblake at ymail.com
Tue Mar 29 00:12:40 PDT 2011


Hi Susan,
Fantastic work in Liberia. Congratulations! I opened space at the Peace Corps 
office last May in Monrovia and they took to it like fish to water. 


Would it be alright to send your information and contact information to a very 
bright young Liberian man who works in one of the hotels and is in college right 
now? I think it would be good for him to check into your groups. He has stayed 
in touch with me for the past year. Would it be alright if I have him contact 
someone in Liberia, if he is interested? Thanks.

Wishing you continued success in Liberia.
Blake Mills


 





________________________________
From: Susan Partnow <susan4ps at comcast.net>
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Sent: Tue, March 29, 2011 1:34:58 AM
Subject: OS and World Cafe at a Community Meeting in Monrovia, Liberia


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
tel. 206-783-8561
fax 206-782-7786
www.globalcitizenjourney.org 
join our mailing list
 
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
Seattle, WA 98107* * ========================================================== 
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU ------------------------------ To subscribe, 
unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of 
oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu: 
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about 
OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist 





*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20110329/dee2e272/attachment-0016.htm>


More information about the OSList mailing list