That's it for the two day intensive Training-of-Trainers series. The meeting goes on, and I'll be doing one-on-ones and meetings with country teams, and one more formal training session on the role of the consultant organiser. Wow, what an experience!
First and foremost I've treasured the chance to invent a new training and carry it out with my respected colleague from Slovakia, Kajo Zboril. He's a lively, wise trainer, but a little quiet, deliberate, and calm - my opposite! We planned, talked, performed and debriefed and corrected and adapted and revised - we got better as we went along, he helped me see possibilities and options in the design - in the end, we developed a very good working team-ship. We agreed our ambition is to do lots more training together.
The design - I wrote a curriculum for a two day training in organizing - ten sessions. We set up the room with two "fronts" - titled "DO" and "Reflect". Essentially the design was for teams (the group was divided into three teams) to prepare and lead the whole group through one of the sessions, then to break, turn the whole room around, and reflect on that session. We de-briefed in terms of Macro design (how did this session fit into the larger design) Micro design (did the plan for this 90 minute session work) and Technique (how did the trainers perform) then we addressed how the participants might adapt this to their own work. The "fix" came when Kajo and I decided that the teams that were not preparing to lead a session should design a real-life adaptation for their home country.
Best line (or one of many) came in the role play of the meeting with the mayor of an imaginary city. Young organizer Radu from Romania was playing the leader who "pins" the mayor. When the mayor started to complain about the difficulties of the city budget, he said, "Madame Mayor, WE are the city budget!" I'm gonna steal that one!
The ending was a session Charlene Sinclair and I did in Detroit many years ago for the first time...there it was called "Message to Martin". In this version we set two chairs in the center of the circle. A person came in, set a paper with the name of someone who is not here on the chair opposite, and said words to that person. I said, to start off, to Martin Luther King, "Thanks for your inspiration and example, all those years ago. We're still at it, and I want to introduce you to these brothers and sisters who are in it together!" (Of course I barely got through this - you know I'm sentimental...) Next, Kajo posted the name of his son, Adam, who's eight. He said, "here I am, away from home again. If you were here you'd know why - I work with these great people, we learn together, we have important things to do - it's for you, for our future, and I know you'll understand." Next, the woman from Paris, Tara - she works with immigrant and disconnected youth and minority and excluded communities. She posted up the name of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. "Thanks, Mr. President for bringing us together and getting us mad and gicving us reason to organise. I want to let you know - we're coming for you, and you're going down!" Her colleague, Reda, posted "Europeans". "Don't be afraid of change, it's happening, we can do this." And on it went.
At dinner I heard the story from the Rumanian group. They are working in neighborhoods, and with people who resist doorknocking and outreach because they remember when putting your name on a petition could mean risking your livelihood or your life. Building trust within shattered communities is always a challenge - it seems especially hard here, and in oither recently totalitarian countries. They're making slow progress, but it's the young, bright and ambitious people (like most of the organizers here), who never lived with that chilling fear, who are rebuilding the skills of public life.
The Germans who work with Paul Cromwell are especially interesting. They are struggling in a socety that's bureaucratic, has all the forms of public life but where anti-immigrant feeling is rising, negative politics are taking hold, and the danger of crushing apathy is one of the big obstacles. What a diverse team - elders, working people, men and women, a Somali-German woman (who told of her visit to the Somali immigrant community in Columbus, OH). One of their number is a professor named Peter Szynka who gave me a copy of his book on Saul Alinsky - I'm struggling through the German, but it's fun to see my favorite quotes in a strange language. Can anybody get this one: „Macht Euch keine Sorgen. Wir werden diesen Sturm der Anerkennung überstehen und man wird uns bald wieder hassen wie zuvor.“ I believe it's a real contribution to the Alinsky literature - focusing on the scientific, intellectual and academic traditions and forebears to his theory and practice. Translators out there? Publishers?
I'm meeting with the Ukrainian team later - they're smart, ambitious and have planted groups in six places. I predict real power will grow there.
A few pictures above, and more news later. (I didn't get a picture of the mound of joy from the Columbus Restaurant on the riverfront bastion by the castle - pillows of happiness, filled with cheese, potato or meat, topped with bacon, a sprig of fresh herb....more of that when I write the food blog.)
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