Dear CO Friends,
After coming back from the CO course 2008, I have lots of sharing about CO Course with my colleagues and friends। They all were too excited to know the SEAPCP approach towards community organizing and tools/creative media that SEAPCP has developed over the time through their experience. I shared the books with them as well and they all had their mouths wide open….wow…॥great books! I shared with them how we can apply SEAPCP approach of community organizing in our situation to make our communities more self reliant, then NGO dependent. We decided to organize a formal training for this purpose. This is where my tough task started.
Well, some of you might know this, that Pakistani society is very much conservative; due to cultural and religious norms, intermingling of sex, specially shaking hands and hugging between men and women is very uncommon, even most men do not hug their closely related female relatives, except for their sisters, mothers and the most immediate relatives। This is especially very true in the context of people who we deal with as community level because for our elites there are no boundaries; they do everything and anything they want to……! As a matter of fact, many of the activities that we did in the CO course, and otherwise the ones mentioned in Jo Hann’s book (the yellow one), require inter-mingling.
As I sit down to plan two-days training course on CO Course, I was kept on thinking for hours and hours which activities to pick keeping in mind our the cultural context of Pakistan। I had lots of apprehensions on different activities. But I know, you my creative friends out there, can really help me out, please help me pick the right activities which I can easily use in the CO training.
4 comments:
not all creative process requires intermingling and touching or even standing in close proximity between men and women. That is why tools include not only active group dynamic games but also drawing, photos, songs, competitive type of games like the bidding game where groups are formed and only required to show the X and Y cards, remember. There are many other processes..just look carefully in the manuals...better yet design your own games...put on your thinking cap...he he
Dear Hassan: pl give us little bit detail on the subject and we all can try for you. We also face same sort of social problems in India let me describe our effort. I had taken following steps:
1. Instead of fullfeldged training to poor women members (of our Self Help Groups) in one go I went for gradual training. (This is to initiate them with the concept gradually and also to create a hunger for learning within themselves).
2. This works very well with poor housewives as they are hardpressed with plethora of works which gives them very less free time.
3. They are not slow learner but they are limited retainer.
4. Here stroy telling can do wonders and if the story is grasping and on their area of interest then they pick up very first.
5. After that process the next task is very easy.
6. If it is a mix group of male and female then I have faced the problem of "ghunghat". In that case the female members cover their head with cloth totally and never speak infront of the male members. In that context I initiate the mix group to sing locally popular folk song
7. Song gets obviosuly strated by female members and in the singing process I make them stop singing and ask the male members to continue the song by themsleves - what results into a great laughter and immeidatley the ice is broken. The advantage point is that local community has 100% ownership of local folk songs and will not mind to sing with females.
I hope this will help you little bit. regards Paul
wow, paul, thanks for sharing this all...i am really impressed.
Well actually, i am going to organize a training with a mix group (both male and females), some volunteers and our staff, so i was little confused which activities to pick, keeping in mind the cultural sensitivity here in Pakistan.
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