Susan sounds like you are doing something useful! And dont be surprised if you find the Liberian folks smiling at you in a quizzical fashion wondering why you think you have come with something new. As you probably know I spent some considerable time in Liberia back in the 60s and early 70s. That experience was a major inspiration for Open Space as we do it today. When the people had an issue of consequence they simply sat in a circle and talked it out. Their name for this practice is Palaver And the saying goes that The sun will not set on a Palaver. In a word, they will keep talking until the issue finds resolution. We did not invent dialogue! Every time I have had the privilege of working with a Black African group (particularly those still connected to their roots) the experience was the same. We started out as usual, and the Africans looked quite serious. After about 15 minutes the serious expressions broke into broad grins they knew. At the end of one Open Space, a Chief came up to me and said with a smile on his face, What took you so long Kwi man? (Kwi is the Kpelle word for white.) I suspect you will find that you will learn infinitely more than you teach, which is usually the case in my experience. And it is nice to know that the circle is complete. Have fun!
Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Dr. Potomac, MD 20854 USA Phone 301-365-2093 www.openspaceworld.com www.ho-image.com (Personal Website) To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]: <http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html> http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html From: OSLIST [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chris Corrigan Sent: Monday, March 28, 2011 9:50 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: OS and World Cafe at a Community Meeting in Monrovia, Liberia 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 <[email protected]> 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, Its 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 didnt 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 everyones 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 roundeveryone 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. Ill 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 <http://www.globalcitizenjourney.org/> join our mailing list <http://oi.vresp.com/?fid=fb96ddc75f> www.susanpartnow.com <http://www.susanpartnow.com/> Partnow Communications, Organizational Development, Consulting & Facilitation www.conversationcafe.org <http://www.conversationcafe.org/> Co-Founder www.compassionatelistening.org <http://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 * * ========================================================== [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 -- CHRIS CORRIGAN Facilitation - Training - Process Design Open Space Technology Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com * * ========================================================== [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 * * ========================================================== [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
