Dear os-list my client asked me to write this email to the os-list.
I have meanwhile facilitated several small OST events here in central Mozambique and started some os-sensibilization and ost-training (by doing) for community development facilitators of the Rural Development Program and a national ONG collaborating with them in land-right issues and I have roughly presented various other "organization transformative large group facilitation techniques" (that is my way to speak about the 18++methods) to this group. They decided, that OST (and Future Search) could play an important role in a Sofala-Community-Development-Model, which we are about to construct together at the basis-level of an SIAD-approach (Systemic Integrated Area Development), which is networking at three levels I. Community Development (fighting poverty, producing the social energy) II. District Development (bundeling and coordinating it) III. Provincial Level (supporting it) After having paired the Community Development Facilitators (who are part of the Rural Area Development Programme) with the Community Development Animators (who are part of the communities) the next step would be to realize do help prepare these tandems to open space again and again in the communties of the focal districts as part of the community animation/development process. So there arise several questions related to the one basic question: "How to realize OST-events in very poor rural communities, where people have a purely oral tradition?" that is: they do not write, do not read, have no access to money (well: less than 0,2 USD/family and day) and technology (well, I saw portable radios around some necks)? I discussed it this morning with the internal consultant (JPV). We are an internal/external OD-consultancy-tandem which is the nucleus of the OD-consultancy system within the Rural Development Programm. The next circle of the Development System around us (at implementation level) are already the Community Facilitators and their District Coordinators). JPV said: "It is impossible! How should they write and post the "temas de paixao"? They can not even write their name! These people from the 'interior' can not interprete x/y-grids like the time/space slots of the bulletin board! How can they organize their working groups without the bulletin board? They can not documentate their working results! They have no watches! They can not start another group in one and a half hour! Forget it!" I said: "Calma! Wait! Describing people as illiterates focuses on deficits from our point of view. But what is the function of fixing the themes of the working groups? What is the function of written or visual documentation? It substitutes mental operations which we, the non-oral people can not any longer realize. We lost a lot of complexity of our memories. And the people in the communities would not be stranger groups. They know each other. So if one of them goes to the center of the circle and tells them, what he/she wants to do in the group, there is already a mental framework of reference in place, they will easily remind which problem this and that guy wanted to resolve together with others. They are able to manage 20 or 30 person-related items! (I gave examples of tremendous memory acts I had experienced with illiterate people here)...WE are not! And with the breakout-room organization it is somehow the same. They all know their territory, so they will be able to memorize the triples person-item-space (who-what-where). And since it will start at the right time and be over when it is over, we have just to install the basic breathing rhytm of the community. Coming together and breaking out, coming together and breaking out." After breathing a little for my-self, I continued: "You know, Harrison insists that he did not invent but discover OST. And he speaks of its African roots. And in my interpretation Harrison's OST with its postings on the bulletin board and its report-system is an adaptation of a stone-age-time social innovation of feasable face2face self-organization of communities for people of an industrialized culture, reminding them of their often forgotten capacities to self-organize. So why not try to go back to the roots? I believe, it is possible" Well, I was in vision-mood and -energy, there and when I said that. But up to now it is only a deep conviction. So perhaps it is not true. And perhaps we will not be able to materialize such a vision. So I am at the point where I REALLY NEED HELP FROM YOU OUT THERE! My questions (for now): 1) Should I take the responsibility to invite my client to go for such a journey? In other words: is it possible to realize open space with people who are completely illiterate? 2) Are there practical experiences I can rely on? 3) Wouldn't it be necessary (and great) to make OST even simpler? (Putting a part of the external instrumentation back into the heads) Bernd ----- [email protected] 16.09.2002 at 14:59:39 (GMT/UT + 02:00) 1) attached to this e-mail : No file 2) All attached files are mentioned by name in the lines above.Please do not open any other attachment! 3) Please send text documents in RichTextFormat/*.rtf, if possible. This also facilitates communication between the mac- and ms-world. ---- Bernd Weber Organization Development Consultant "DEVELOP YOUR CAPACITIES - MATERIALIZE YOUR VISION" C.P. 1462, Beira, Sofala, MOZAMBIQUE fone: +258-3-32 98 59, cellfone:+258-82-43 79 77 ----- WB-TrainConsult management- & human resources training, consulting & development ----- Gumpendorfer Straße 88b/18, AT-1060 Wien, AUSTRIA fone & fax: +431 596 86 57, cellfone: +43 0662 7667872 ----- Inscricao no grupo de discussao "Sistemas organizacionais": Escrever um email para o endereco <[email protected]> * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
