Flag test event

We have are setting up a virtual community for GROWL on the degrowth.co-munity.net platform. All modules, courses and materials will be made available here, free for use and adaptation by anyone.

With the aim of developing and continuously improving an open knowledge resource base, we encourage all trainers and future trainers to actively use and contribute to this space with their questions, experiences, materials and opinions.

Often when we train, we are not looking at how we are are training but only on what we train.

We want to make an experience together (instead using one or more methodologies).

Objective:

Gain the ability to do the exercise ourselves. Discuss if the tool works, if it has to be adapted,. Coming from TTT to degrowth-TTT: How are we working when we are training in the context of degrowth.

Observe what we do when we train the trainers. How people are discussing. How they are speaking, talking to each other. Are we behaving as we want it for degrowth education. Reflect if I live a degrowth life, work in a degrowth way? Observe the human dimension of training.

Process

One of the „instructors“ goes to the other room with a group of observers to give them an introduction into what and how they should observe.

Participants form two circles. An inner circle of participants / audience. An outer circle of observers.

A presents a topic to the others for around 15 minutes. In front of an audience (around 25 people). The audience just listens to A. After the presentation there are 5 minutes for questions, without discussion. Then there is a discussion about what was new / interesting, reflection about what was heard. Then A is reflecting on the discussion, what she got out of it.

Presentation (15min)

Case study from agricultural education. Women's group of la Via Campesina Austria. Worked with it for eight years, 5-20 changing members. Has strong principles of adult education: self representation and grass root orientation (A draws it). Both terms lost their meaning because they are used in abundance. A asks audience about what they think they are meaning. top down would be the opposite of grassroot. Opposite of self representation: somebody from outside speaks for the group, advocacy.

Group of farmers women. Is not easy for them to gather in one place, be away from work / the farm. Difficult to represent themselves. Decided that if they want to represent themselves they have to educate themselves and get politicized. Talking about agricultural politics, how it could look like, how can childcare be organized... Achieved a pension system for women farmers.

They are the ones who are talking to politicians, organizing conferences. They organize exchanges with countries like Burkina Faso, Ghana etc.. They have a blog on the website.

They found a structure that meets the needs of their life: meet in the afternoon, organized themselves subsidies for their travels so that they do not need to pay their travels, organized payment for a educational officer to evaluate their work, meetings are well structured: invitation in advance, protocols of former meetings. Power relations could shift easily as the coordinator has more information, therefore the persons role is reflected constantly, openness about power relations and dealing with them.

Audience: questions (5min)

• what is your role, what methods do you use: not training them, they train themselves and use the officer, tasks: speaking at public non-political events, representation of the group

• explain more grassroot: talking about their daily life, what effects them, e.g. child care, hygiene regulations, they themselves are the „grass“

• what was the motivation? How did it start? One person doing it? Organization started as a mountain farmers organization to tackle the income gap to lowland farmers, realized that nobody else would do it for them, the group was very male based, women came up to challenge the patriarchal structure, we have to discuss about the role of women and their particular problems

• who funds the group? The Ministry of education, but they have to find additional funds for exchanges, have a cabaret group who is playing shows in small village bars, understand that specifically as adult education

Audience: What did the audience find interesting? What is helpful for future activities?

• One participant is working with a women group in the country site who works on ecological awareness, have problem of self representation, feel alone, difficult at the grass root to define themselves as part of the society

• self representation was the very interesting part, NGOs tend to speak for others very quickly, speaking person should be an „instrument“ of the people

• some people cant speak for themselves, in the degrowth context in questions of ecological conflicts they might not be heard,

• man in a women group, as a manager, difficult situation

• regarding ecology: trees cannot present themselves, when I am fighting for a tree I am fighting for myself not exactly the tree

• important to re-discuss the relation between trainer and trainees

• who is „she“? Is it possible to be just an instrument or is she building the strategy?

• Dangers of the role diversion, person who is dealing with things every day has more information, likes how constant reflexion is institutionalized in the example

• Easy to forget sometimes that the people you represent have their own life with their own problems

• you are not forced to collaborate if your views of the world is not represented

• Initiative in Poland to get women out of the house, is not political but it has the potential to

• its not enough to have in common that women are women, women farmers is a specific case, good to have a common problem/profession/interest

Reflection by A

• it's a minority program, most women groups are baking cakes, so she was lucky to find them

• most important question: who is „she“? Is she only an instrument, or is she building the strategy? How she sees her position: a bit above the ground / grass root but grounded by the women, takes part in the meetings, has an equal say, e.g. women decided they wanted to go to Brussels and meet some persons, A made suggestions, then mainly organization of the travel, of the meetings etc.

Question to audience: How did you feel?

• pictures or videos would have made it more lively, would help to make it easier to understand what A does

• easy to follow, discussion went deep very fast, facilitation was missing, discussion was dominated by few people

Observers

The task was to observe three different things: content, group dynamics, non-verbal communication. The observers are asked to write keywords down.

Content:

• Some participants were not aware that they talked about so many things, others thought the had talked about more, e.g. methods like theater

Group dynamic:

• the same male participants answering the question, two people (male) had most time speaking, three persons had less, rest spoke very little

• facilitation was needed, one participant invited the persons who had not spoken to speak, people who spoke a lot do not feel the need for facilitating, there are people who need more time to prepare for speaking and they should get the time for it

• other participants did not have difficulties to speak but felt they didn't get the time, felt they had to interrupt

• some people don't have anything to say and do not feel comfortable to speak, why force everybody to speak, better find other forms to express oneself, e.g playing, writing etc.

• people can dominate the group without talking

• facilitating can be spontaneous, does not have to be formalized, for groups not used to this forms of discussion, facilitation can be helpful

non-verbal communication:

• can pictures / video be an advantage / disadvantage? Time constraints, disrupts attention, pictures makes things easier to grasp

• while discussion participants kept looking at the presenter, despite sitting down, being out of the discussion, turning the seat around

Conclusion

Is this a tool we would like to use for a degrowth-TTT?

• problem: one can feel constrained to talk, being observed

• violent because people are judged for what they say, people can feel trapped, roles should be switched

• method itself is degrowth, needs little resources, you can do it everywhere, traditional way of passing knowledge, for a training it has to be mixed with other methods

• method also with observers is a good method for learning how discussions work, for TTT, not for degrowth

• method for a more experienced group, exercise for horizontal communication

• questions of resources (presentations, beamer) should be discussed more broad, in question of ecology etc.