Dear friends in Open Space/GC-list I have decided to focus my time and energy, as much as possible, to contributing in a critical area here in Sweden. Last year we received 160 000 asylum seekers. Of course this means some challenges but also lots of fantastic opportunities. Many many people are engaging as volunteers, villages who have been sleeping for decades wake up etc etc
One of the challenges is that neighbours often become afraid when new asylum camps are opened near where they live. Or homes for lonely refugee children (35 000 came last year). There are so many rumours going on, and shit is spread on social media so many normal people are very much afraid from stories they heard often false ones but also that single events create pictures in peoples heads. In my hometown one school which was being rebuilt to house lonely refugee children was burnt down :( and we had many fires like that all over the country :( What the authorities usually do when a new housing is to open is to invite the public to a information-meeting where they put some politicians, the CEO of the company running the camp, some officials from the municipality in front of a crowd of people who are worried and some are even outright hostile with racist ideas. You can imagine what usually happens I was in one of those meetings a couple of weeks ago, it was horrible. I think the usual impact is: * Increased fear and hostility towards people coming to our country from war zones. * Increased mistrust to the politicians and municipality. * People at the front get more or less badly hurt. Not a very good result. In fact its outright dangerous to arrange these kind of meetings. But mostly they dont know better. Which is quite surprising to me as there are thousands of trained facilitators in our country. Since some time I have been working with colleagues in our Open Space and Genuine Contact communities to create alternative ways to have such meetings. We have some good ideas but would also like to hear what comes up for you? Normally these meetings are conducted in the evening, length of 2-3 hours. Normally they are not well planned and not facilitated other than trying to control them. They are called information meetings which says a lot. So Id love to hear your experiences, ideas, suggestions Thomas Herrmann Open Space Consulting AB <http://www.openspaceconsulting.com/> www.openspaceconsulting.com Ni når oss per telefon: +46 (0)709 98 97 81 eller Epost: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] Open Space Consulting AB är ett företag med STORA ambitioner att guida ledare, organisationer men även lokalsamhällen att nå sin fulla kraft för att infria sina drömmar. Vi bidrar med kunskaper och praktiska verktyg för att stödja er att finna er bästa väg. Mer information LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasherrmannopenspaceconsult Facebook Företagssida: https://www.facebook.com/OpenSpaceConsulting
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