Quick, Easy, Deep and Dignified

  • Objective: To build project interventions based on the expressed needs and interests of the impact group in a way that is participatory.
  • Preparation/Materials: Markers, flipchart, camera. When inviting participants, stress that they are the experts and so the goal is to learn from them. Also, facilitators must be trained and familiar with appreciative inquiry.
  • Participants: A handful of participants from the impact group, along with some representatives of key target group members.

Steps

Phase 1: Appreciative Inquiry

  • Following introductions, the expert is asked to choose a facilitator to work with them. Ask the expert participant if he or she prefers privacy, or is comfortable with others from the target population also listening to their conversations with the facilitator.
  • The facilitator and expert participant engage appreciative inquiry to learn about their situation. Following, facilitators ask the expert participant if they would be comfortable to share their story with the group.
  • Following appreciative inquiry exercises facilitator asks the experts how they felt about the exercise? Was it stressful? How are their emotions now? This is a critical part in the process as the experts are able to express their feelings.
  • The stories from appreciative inquiry are then shared with the entire group (with permission of expert participants).

 

Phase 2: Dreaming

  • The facilitator then asks the experts to go off alone and spend 10 minutes dreaming about their lives within 5 or 10 years. What do they want to be? Where do they want to be? What will their environment be like? If all participants are dreaming ask the non-experts to dream of the future lives of the experts. Some exercises have asked participants to draw their dreams.
  • Following, participants share their dreams with the group.

 

Phase 3: Goals and Objectives

  • The facilitator then asks the expert participants:
    • How would they see their dreams becoming action, who are the principal actors?
    • Is there an overarching component to the dreams.
  • Once a goal is decided upon, the lead facilitator goes back to the dreams and break them down
  • As a group, participants think about the goal identified and breakdown the objectives within it.
  • In smaller groups, depending on the number of objectives, the lead facilitator asks participants to flesh out the objectives and indicate what sort of activities would support them. This may be done through drawing.
  • Once the groups have refined the objectives and activities, participants come back together and discuss.

 

Phase 4: Indicators

  • In small groups (formed for discussing each objective), the lead facilitator asks:
    • What would the changes be?
    • How could we prove that change had happened?
  • Groups then draw or use silent theater to illustrate these questions.

 

Phase 5: Developing Proposal

  • Based on this exercise, teams then write each phase of the workshop to integrate into proposals

Related Tools


 

Resources

  • K McIlvaine and I Ntanwundora (2008). Quick, Easy, Deep and Dignified: An empowering and fun approach to programme design. CARE International-Burundi.