Step Five: My Impact An activity to explore our own abilities and those we are surrounded by in our environment. We will also encourage participants to explore the transition to next year’s content area, Diversity.
My Impact An activity to explore our own abilities and those we are surrounded by in our environment. Step #5 of Right On aims to wrap up the year 2013. How did we improve our attitudes, skills and knowledge surrounding Human Rights, and what can we do with these gained abilities? We will also encourage participants to explore the transition to next year’s content area, Diversity.
ASK – Attitudes, Skills, Knowledge After completing this activity, participants should have developed the following: Attitudes (Willingness to): ■ The willingness to approach possible partners for future CISV projects. ■ The willingness to further develop the link between the Human Rights and Diversity content areas in January and February 2014 Skills (Ability to): ■ The ability to identify common themes in both the Human Rights and Diversity content areas ■ The ability to acknowledge and support diversity in one’s own community. Knowledge (Understanding of): ■ Important aspects of diversity are tied up with human rights, such as The Freedom of Choice, The Freedom of Belief and Religion, Freedom from Discrimination and The Right to a Nationality. ■ In 2014, CISV will focus on the content area Diversity. ■ Who in my community could act as a guest speaker for CISV?
Basic Information & Preparation ■ Time: 1h – 1h 15min, depending on length of discussion ■ Material: two, four or six big posters (depending on group size) enough pens for all participants at least two, four or six markers (depending on the number of groups)
The Activity - Do, Reflect, Generalize, Apply Do
1. Divide the group into two, four or six sub-groups (depending on the number of
participants – there should be four to six people in each sub-group). It is important that you have an even number of groups. 2. Half of the groups move into a different room (rooms A and B)
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3. The groups in room A will engage with the content area ‘Human Rights’, the groups
in room B with ‘Diversity’. Tell them by the time they have separated into room A and B. 4. Each sub-group gets a large poster, at least one marker and a pen for each participant. 5. Each sub-group brainstorms silently about the following questions, each focusing on one content area only. Note: A silent brainstorm means that everybody writes down his personal thoughts anywhere on the big poster. There does not necessarily have to be an order in the notes, just write down anything you come up with. a. Within this content area, what very specific issue are you an expert on? b. What news stories have you been following that might relate to Human
Rights / Diversity? c. Which area from your job / studies / school relate to Human Rights / Diversity? d. Do you know anyone in your environment/community that is an expert on other specific issues of the content area? Which aspects? e. How do you get to know them or about their knowledge? Reflect 1. After 10 minutes they are allowed to talk again. All group members can share their thoughts and what they wrote down. 2. Now, because some of the notes might overlap, the group can cluster their thoughts. They can do so by using the original poster or turn it around and use the backside to start again with a blank sheet. If they want, the groups can use the following cluster:
University/School Who do I know? Who might have a story to tell? Family
Where did I gain these ASK?
Me
Workplace
What do I know? What ASK do I want to share? Attitudes
Volunteering/Other
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Skills
Knowledge
Generalize The sub-groups now swap posters. Groups in room A will receive a poster from a group in room B and vice-versa. 1. Each sub-group now discusses what they see and identifies overlapping topics by circling items that relate to both content areas. 2. Each sub-group prepares so they can share and explain how 3 points have to do both with human rights and diversity. 3. Now everybody gathers again. Each sub-group shares the 3 overlapping topics with everybody. Apply (15 minutes) This part will point even more towards the 2014 content area, ‘Diversity’. The previous tasks made the participants aware of people and issues around Human Rights and Diversity in their communities. You will now facilitate a discussion around the overall question “How diverse are the communities that we live in?” You or the group of participants can lead this into any direction. Examples may be diverse problems, people with diverse backgrounds or from diverse ethnicities, diverse languages spoken in your community or the diversity of cultural opportunities. Here are some questions that might help you do so, but feel free to formulate your own: • How did you get to know the people and their stories, you have mentioned earlier in this activity? • Do you think diversity is necessary, or a value, for a (modern) community? • Are there any groups or stakeholders that encourage diversity (e.g. in language) in your community or society as a whole? What actions do they take and have you ever participated in any of them? • What challenges result from diversity? • How does diversity represent some of the fundamental Human Rights? Please take a picture of participants and/or their clusters and send it to this email address to share it with Junior Branches around the world: righton@ijb.cisv.org.
Adjust this activity to your JB’s needs! You can use all this material however you want – Only like the ASK? Great! Think the debrief questions are lame? Change them! Want to focus on only the 'Do' part of the activity and add the rest yourself ? Perfect. Nobody knows your JB's needs better than you do.
Tips for facilitators: ▪ Stick to the time limits and announce them. ▪ Explain each step of the activity by giving examples and make sure e verybody understands.
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▪ As a facilitator, don’t express opinions - take a step back.
▪ We encourage you to write down questions you find difficult to answer and send t hem in – Right On has access to a network of experts and will try their best to get back to you with good answers.
Introducing your Junior Branch to ‘Right On’ After you’ve run this activity, you can tell your juniors about Right On - the goal is to emphasize the Global Movement of Junior Branch in each chapter. You can tell them to check out the facebook page (facebook.com/righton2013) to see the results of the activity you just ran and other JB’s results from around the world.
Further Reading For further readings we compiled a couple of websites which you might find interesting. Here, you can explore the overlapping of both content areas even more. The Challenge of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity (Ayton-Shenker, Diana 1995) United Nations Background Note http://www.un.org/rights/dpi1627e.htm Human Rights and Cultural Diversity go hand in hand (UN 2010) A statement by a group of UN human rights experts to mark World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx? NewsID=10051&LangID=E Meeting Halfway (2013) “An online platform for all of Europe – a Meeting Halfway between European countries, their languages and their people,” stories about food, migration, language and love. http://meetinghalfway.eu/ The Uses and Abuses of Multiculturalism (Sen, Amartya 2006) A piece by 1998 ecomonics Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen on the distinction between multiculturalism and “plural monoculturalism”, and why the first is often mistaken for the second. http://www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/library/wf-58.htm
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