Hello everyone!
I'm a first time poster. I asked a couple questions in a facebook group and was told about this group. I do have a couple of specific questions, but honestly I mostly need a little reassurance that what I am attempting to do is not completely insane. And if it is, then maybe some ideas for how to mitigate the damage?
I've committed to literally everyone in my professional field to host a
Global Youth Summit for Freedom of Religion or Belief. I've got a few dozen countries co-sponsoring the thing as well as several NGOs. It's something I have had on the backburner for years, until the UK Prime Minister's Special Envoy heard about it, lit a fire under me, and now it is spreading like wildfire and I can hardly keep up.
So here are the questions:
1) So far we have young people from around 65 countries registered. Instead of doing three eight hour days, I decided to do one 24 (well 25 really) hour day so that people can participate from wherever they are in the world--during work, before or after school or work, etc. I genuinely have no idea when people will participate or for how long, and I know that this violates one of the rules of Open Space which is that it is no good to pop in and out. But for this purpose I really don't see an alternative.
So, insane? Any way to mitigate the damage? I did schedule the Opening Circle for a time when people should at least be awake from LA to Bangkok (and we don't have many Pacific Islanders registered yet anyway). And for those who are working we will record that event for later consumption.
2) Does anyone have experience with multilingual Open Space events? My first instinct was that everyone needs to speak English. But the result is that we have only three participants from Latin America. So we are a "global" summit minus one entire continent. So then my second thought is that, if we could get like 50 people, with enough bilingual people to cross-pollinate, then we could have a sort of an event within an event.
Again, crazy? Or totally fine because Open Space is Open?
Finally, this event is already going to be wild. We have a ton of Nigerians coming, many of whom have personally seen their friends and family members stabbed, burned, disappeared, etc., by Islamists. And then we have Muslims whose friends and families are getting lynched by Hindus in India, or genocided in Burma and China, and Hindus who are being persecuted in Pakistan, and LGBTQ youth who are getting bullied by so-called Christians, etc. etc. etc. Basically, everyone is a victim somewhere, and everyone is an aggressor somewhere, and I'm getting them all together in one big virtual room with 50+ breakout sessions and just one me.
So, is co-facilitation a possibility? Would anybody be interested? Also, I do need to sleep at some point. We're going to need mechanisms to enforce a code of conduct (nonviolence at a minimum), but I think that I shouldn't be the one to enforce it because I need to hold the space, yes?
Basically I could just really use some support, and I read that this group is good for that. It has been a minute since grad school when I studied all of this stuff. And while I have taken liberties with the OST model in the past, this time I'm worried that I might have gone too far.
Thanks for any words.
Patrice
