Hello All
Further to my being in West Sumatra in May of this year to give a keynote address at an international conference on ‘The Health Care Revolution in Indonesia’ …at which I suggested that OST is a very effective means by which to enable communities to communicate their perceived needs for health care services. See: http://openspaceworld.ning.com/forum/topics/sewing-seeds-for-ost The organizer of the conference was Prof Dr Elfindri (like many people in Indonesia he has only one name) who was one of my PhD students when I was an academic nutritionist in a medical school in Australia in the early 90s. While his background is in economics he wished to better understand the relationship between the nutritional status of communities and their productivity. In the course of his studies I passed on to him the concept of Positive Deviance (PD). He used this approach in the field work for his PhD thesis and subsequently in further studies. So successful did this prove that he published widely on the approach and also set up his own publishing company to produce books on the topic. Elfindri is now a well respected and well connected person in Sumatra and beyond in Indonesia. He invited me back late last month to present, jointly, a series of seminar/workshops on OST and PD in several cities around this island, all to audiences comprising mainly staff and students of private universities. My role was to cover matters to do with OST, his on PD. We both also introduced our respective perspectives on ‘soft skills’ or ‘people skills’ Here are brief points about these elements of our presentations: ‘Experiential' OST, PD, roles of Dania Pratiwi. 1. ‘Hands on’ experience with OST In only one of the four sessions was there opportunity to provide this, given limitations of time and space. Nonetheless I touched on OST as a means of communicating with communities and its potential significance for health care practitioners wherever possible. In the first of the presentations, scheduled for a morning only, in Padang, while 500 participants were expected 1300 materialised. No possibility! In two others the time was even more limited and so no prospect either. In the one where there was an opportunity (a full day event in Pekanbaru, in Riau province), the time allocated was two hours only. And with an audience of some 250 - in a theatre with fixed seats that did not swivel - there was no possibility of having a circle! This audience comprised staff and students of nursing, midwifery and health education. Very briefly – the OST experience happened and happened well. I had mentioned in a talk in the morning that it would take place, immediately after lunch, and what the potential value to them could be. And had shown John Engle’s lovely video<http://openspaceworld.ning.com/video/john-engles-short-sweet>at the Mennonite Health Assembly Open Space. (Also to the 1300 strong audience earlier). John, even while you and your family are in a precarious situation in Haiti your influence is percolating nicely in Indonesia. In introducing the ‘hands on’ I: . suggested to the audience that they imagine that they were in a circle! . walked up and back up the centre isle of the theatre, in lieu of the circle, making eye contact with as many of the audience as possible. . spoke to the principles and associated ideas which Dania – see below – had produced beautifully and which were on display on the front of the stage. . indicated that the theme was ‘How may health care practitioners improve the nutritional status of children?’ . also indicated that there was time only for one breakout session of about 75 minutes. . invited everyone to come down to the front where there were paper and pens, and write what they thought was important to explore. . encouraged those who had a topic to offer to come to the front again to announce it. Whoosh! Immediately I had finished saying these things about 15 people from all parts of the audience ran (no leaped!) down, picked up their paper and began to scribe furiously. And then came forward to announce – through a hand held microphone – their topics. Having done this they pinned their papers to a board. What to do next? With only about 75 minutes for the break out session and about 15 topics I suggested that we pick five of them, randomly, to become the agenda items. These were then typed up by Dania and projected onto a large screen. Once this was done I invited the proponents of each to come down the front and allocated them a number from 1 to 5. I then asked them to follow me up the centre isle, where I ‘deposited’ them - each holding a piece of paper with their number on it- about 10 metres apart. When all were in position I invited everyone to go to join with the person whose topic attracted them, find a place to gather and get on with it! (As an aside I would add that, while this was happening, I felt a totally unexpected attack of diarrhea coming on. The food in Sumatra – similar for every meal of the day – is very spicy, normally no problem for me. Having finally said ‘go to it’ I had to dash and only just made it!). On my return, much relieved, to the hall I found that all the groups were sitting on the floor between the stage and the first row of seats, and were thoroughly engaged.When the time was up I asked them to hand in their reports. At least one of these was ‘voluminous’ in that the scribe had recorded several pages of notes. And then invited anyone to come down to the microphone to express their experience of being a participant. As this was all done in Bahasa Indonesian I did not follow the details. What I did gather were three comments: . Until this experience I had always thought that only the most intelligent members of a class were capable of coming up with ideas on a topic such as the one we addressed. Now I know that anyone may do so. . When my colleagues and I do research we usually look at the negative side of issues. I can now see that looking for positive aspects would be very valuable. . I have never before imagined myself coming forward to talk to an audience this large. Today I have done it. Who knows what the principals of this private university made of their observations of this event? (The three of us had to leave immediately after to appear in a live local TV program). In my experience the chances of receiving direct feedback are not great. Nonetheless I always invoke my own primary measure of success: It happened! Being invited back would be another indication of impact. 2. Positive Deviance Referring to my post: ‘OST and PD (Positive Deviance)’ 11 Nov 2010 and the comments on this: While PD and OST are highly complementary they are different approaches. PD, in my understanding, provides a powerful framework for conceptualizing what is ‘working’ well, what to look out for and how to use insights and knowledge of why some people do better than others in seemingly similar situations. Implementing such knowledge in particular contexts requires a different skill set from facilitating OST forums. Joelle Lyons Everett, in Seattle, does both and says that her background in OST serves her well for her work as a coach of PD in addressing MRSA infections in hospitals. I suspect that Henry Lipmanowicz and Lisa Kimball would say the same, *nes pas? * * * 3. Roles of Dania Pratiwi Dania, a recent graduate from the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, was the ‘logisitics’ person on this enterprise. See http://conversare.net/?p=448for more information on how this came about and to gain a sense of who she is. She was the most personable and capable person imaginable to do this. She took everything in her stride, mainly translating what I was saying but plenty more, as an integral member of ‘The Three Amigos’. Something which I learned during our several most enjoyable days together was that Dania’s one and only experience of OST to date was at the Second World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace<http://www.imamsetrabbins.org/en/congresses/detail/1/10/7>in Seville, Spain in March 2006. This was as a 19 year old member of an organization called ‘Children of Abraham.’ There she met Harrison who facilitated an OST session. And also, for the first time in her life as a Muslim, Rabbis. “I met a lot of Great Imams and Rabbis there and learned a lot of things from them. I learned that we can always turn our enemies into friends. I also learned that we may be different, but inside we are brothers.” This experience prompted Dania to join the OSlistserv, which is how she came to offer her assistance when she saw that I would be working in Indonesia in May of this year. As you may surmise doing this work with Elfindri and Dania was likely to be eye-opening for many people, and certainly was truly wonderful experiencing for us. The portents are that there will be follow-ups next year. Go well Alan Hong Kong * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
