We joined in the facilitation workshop facilitated by Rabea from Access Alliance.
There were us, Ruth, Mohamed, and a woman from Access Alliance.
Rabea had a lot of experience in facilitation, and she brought many reference books on facilitation and popular education which was interesting because I took this pop-ed class last term. Actually, most of what she gave us as documents was what I read or heard in that class. Anyway, it was good to see them again.
After ice-breaking exercise called 'Bus Exercise', Rabea set some agendas for this workshop, and started with setting charters for the workshop. I had some experience with it because some of classes that I took always started with this exercise which I found really useful. Rabea also encouraged us to talk about our expectation on this workshop, such as what we want to learn from it. There were various kinds of needs according to each person's experience.
Eventually, all the expectations could not be fulfilled for many reasons including time-constraints. (Rabea said that this workshop originally runs for two days, but we got only 2 1/2 hours this time!) So, the workshop was mainly about general issues like the role of facilitaors, different kinds of leadership, designing, etc. Lastly, Rabea handed out some copies from ref books she got from Catalyst Centre (where Chris Cavanagh works!). At this time, SK was not there because he had an evening class. Anyway, we wrapped up the workshop with lots of questions and assignments which we ourselves should think about.
Our reflections....
Rabea said that we as facilitator should know how to enjoy silence among participants. That was interesting to know because we were usually worried about silence from participants when we had our photo workshop in Kenya.
While we were doing "Best & Worst Facilitator" exercise, it was great to share those stories with others, and especially looking back on our experiences as facilitators in Kenya was meaningful because we could see ourselves as facilitators and hear others' reflection on our experiences.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
after meeting for the 1st session (Mar 19)
Planning meeting for 1st session
Finally, we've got a list of applicants for the project.
They're all 15 persons from various backgrounds in terms of origin, language, and age.
There is only one Asian men (Chinese) in the group, and he's said to be the only Asian applicant for the project, so he couldn't be missed out!
We've decided on the first session to be mainly about these three themes; 1) general intro of the project (consent forms, safety tips, charters) w/ ice-breaking exercise 2) intro of photography in terms of technique 3) power of photography.
First, we wanted to do some exercise about anti-oppression (suggested by Rabea), but we should've given it up because of time constraints. Also, some people were worried about people being shamed by talking about their social locations publically, esp for the first session, and we all agreed. This is the first session, and we don't want to make people feel overwhelmed...
We also decided to include 'self-portrait' exercise to each session first because we wanted to identify photos with photographers' portraits, and secondly we wanted to give people casual themes.
The first homework for the 2nd session would be: 1) People you know 2) Places in Black Creek that you like 3) A day in a life of.
Our reflections......
It was good to have Mohamed in our project because he's one of community members in Black Creek so he knows almost every participant in some ways. So he knew what people might want and get from this project, and he gave very useful and practical advices based on that, which could save lots of time to organize the session. For example, he suggested that we should change the term of 'guidelines' to 'charters' which is more softened. Without Mohamed, we couldn't have considered these critical things.
About anti-oppression exercise, we are still not sure about doing that in our future sessions. Even if we could, who's going to lead the exercise? If we let one of the community members lead the exercise, will there be lively discussion without feeling ashamed??
As this project is a part of a big research project of the region, outcomes (such as research questions and discussions, photographs) would matter a lot at the end. So we thought that the role of facilitator in this project is more important than any other, in that sense, we as outsiders might have some barriers in doing the job. The only 'insider' among the facilitators is Mohamed and it would've been better to have more 'insiders' as facilitators to do the work more efficiently.
As for the applicants... with so broad ranges in age(15-65 yrs), origin... we wonder what kind of outcome would be produced during the project. Even when we did our project in Kenya with kids from 6-14yrs, there existed some differences and barriers among their work. So, we imagine this would be somewhat challenging for us, but worth to giving it a try.
In general, the meeting for the 1st session was a kind of time-consuming because we all didn't have a clear concept of what the 1st session is to be. So many of us were not sure about which exercise to be out or not, which took lots of time to decide.
Finally, we've got a list of applicants for the project.
They're all 15 persons from various backgrounds in terms of origin, language, and age.
There is only one Asian men (Chinese) in the group, and he's said to be the only Asian applicant for the project, so he couldn't be missed out!
We've decided on the first session to be mainly about these three themes; 1) general intro of the project (consent forms, safety tips, charters) w/ ice-breaking exercise 2) intro of photography in terms of technique 3) power of photography.
First, we wanted to do some exercise about anti-oppression (suggested by Rabea), but we should've given it up because of time constraints. Also, some people were worried about people being shamed by talking about their social locations publically, esp for the first session, and we all agreed. This is the first session, and we don't want to make people feel overwhelmed...
We also decided to include 'self-portrait' exercise to each session first because we wanted to identify photos with photographers' portraits, and secondly we wanted to give people casual themes.
The first homework for the 2nd session would be: 1) People you know 2) Places in Black Creek that you like 3) A day in a life of.
Our reflections......
It was good to have Mohamed in our project because he's one of community members in Black Creek so he knows almost every participant in some ways. So he knew what people might want and get from this project, and he gave very useful and practical advices based on that, which could save lots of time to organize the session. For example, he suggested that we should change the term of 'guidelines' to 'charters' which is more softened. Without Mohamed, we couldn't have considered these critical things.
About anti-oppression exercise, we are still not sure about doing that in our future sessions. Even if we could, who's going to lead the exercise? If we let one of the community members lead the exercise, will there be lively discussion without feeling ashamed??
As this project is a part of a big research project of the region, outcomes (such as research questions and discussions, photographs) would matter a lot at the end. So we thought that the role of facilitator in this project is more important than any other, in that sense, we as outsiders might have some barriers in doing the job. The only 'insider' among the facilitators is Mohamed and it would've been better to have more 'insiders' as facilitators to do the work more efficiently.
As for the applicants... with so broad ranges in age(15-65 yrs), origin... we wonder what kind of outcome would be produced during the project. Even when we did our project in Kenya with kids from 6-14yrs, there existed some differences and barriers among their work. So, we imagine this would be somewhat challenging for us, but worth to giving it a try.
In general, the meeting for the 1st session was a kind of time-consuming because we all didn't have a clear concept of what the 1st session is to be. So many of us were not sure about which exercise to be out or not, which took lots of time to decide.
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