Rolling Earth, movement education

A simple way to help people tell a story by providing prompts that keep the story moving and demand richer description and reflection.

Sitting in a circle, participants take turns telling a story with the facilitator (or as Boal says, the Jokerⁱ) providing the links:

Participant 1: "My friend called me this morning and told me she was going to quit school..."

Joker: "because..."

Participant 2: "...she needs to make money and she feels like school has no meaning."

Joker: "But..."
...

This is a simple tool for equalizing participation in small group discussion and raising awareness of how much people speak. It's probably not original, but I can't recall seeing it before.

Flow:
In a smallish group (ten people) in one of my courses, I prepared a set of chits -- small rectangular pieces of card stock (cut up index cards) -- and gave each participant five chits (including me).

Standing/sitting in a circle.

The facilitator starts the game by pretending to pick up and hold in his/her hands an imaginary object. S/he considers the object, then declares, "This stinks!" and wrinkles his/her nose.

By Matt Noyes, adapted from "Power" in Literacy for Empowerment: A resource handbook for community based educators, as adapted from an activity by Barbara Greene of the Mountain Women's Exchange.

[illustration: workers placing stickers on a democracy and power lineⁱ]

Summary:

These are categories we used in the power lineⁱ at the 2000 National Rank-and-File Carpenters Conference in Boston, Mass. that AUD organized with Carpenters for a Democratic Union.

Note:

• In the actual chart, the categories were much larger -- 90 point type.
• You have to create categories that match your participants and their concerns (based on any information you can gather before the event).
• You should always include at least two blank columns and encourage participants to add any categories they think are missing from the power line.

Some problem trees (from around the world):

"Problem-cause-effect tree diagram" from Our People, Our Resources
http://www.iucn.org/themes/spg/Files/opor/fig5_1c.html

Another tree, from Eric Mar's Asian Studies and Activism website.
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~ericmar/tree.html

How-to description of the problem tree activity, with a link to an image (near the top), from Dublin radion station Near 90.3 FM's Community Media Participatory Learning Manual
http://www.nearfm.ie/plm114.htm

Description of the problem tree activity, from a BBC article about women organizing in Malawi.

By Matt Noyes.

Summary:
This activity uses a simple game to help people learn and remember the basic terminology of Robert's Rules of Parliamentary procedure. (See links to Robert's Rules sites.)

Good for:
Making the jargon and basic procedures familiar, helping people see how to use the terminology to do what they want to do.

Materials:

By Matt Noyes, adapted from Tecnicas Participativas Para la Educacion Popular, Tomo I, in collaboration with Nadia Marin Molina of the Workplace Project/Centro Pro Derechos Laborales.

Summary:
Using index cards and a timeline chart, participants reconstruct the work they have done in the previous time period (e.g. six months or a year).

Good for:

By Matt Noyes, from a workshop with Leon Rosenblatt

Summary:
This is a spur of the moment role play where participants and educators act out the actions and problems they have been discussing, with no preparation or script.

Good for:

By Matt Noyes. Adapted from La Pecera in Tecnicas Participativas Para La Educacion Popular, Tomo I, with the help of carpenter, educator, and rank-and-file journalist Mike Orrfelt.

Summary:
In this activity, participants sit in three concentric circles and hold a conversation in three stages.

Good for: