Stakeholder participation is essential for the long term impact of language development activities, multilingual education, adult literacy and community development efforts. This event explored how we can work in a way that encourages greater community participation in our activities. During the event we grew in our participatory mindsets, shared participatory techniques and tools which we have created or found helpful, and wrestled with problems or challenges we have faced in increasing stakeholder participation. We also had some break-out sessions each day focusing on different areas suggested by participants.
EVENT SCHEDULE
Wednesday 17th May
08:30-09:00 - Arrival & Registration
09:00-09:15 - Welcome & Introductions
09:15-10:30 - Plenary 1: Sharing of experiences and good practice in increasing community participation
10:30-11:00 - Break
11:00-12:00 - Plenary 2: How does the way that we encourage participation vary depending on who we are working with?
12:00-12:30 - Intro to Open Space
12:30-14:00 - Lunch
14:00-15:30 - Parallel Sessions… Tool demo 1: What We Want Our Children to Know; Topic 1: Explore what helps and hinders community participation; Topic 2: Exploring how to facilitate discussions well with less literate people and communities
15:30-16:00 - Break
16:00-17:15 - Open Space Sessions (see brief introduction here)
17:15-17:30 - Daily Highlights
Thursday 18th May
09:00-10:30 - Plenary 3: Vision building, vision sharing, and social mobilization as encouragers of community participation
10:30-11:00 - Break
11:00-12:30 - Plenary 4: Encouraging community participation in Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education programs
12:30-14:00 - Lunch
14:00-15:30 - Parallel Sessions… Tool demo 2: The Flower Tool; Topic 3: First contact with a community and its effects on community participation; Topic 4: Multilingualism and how it impacts education and community development
15:30-16:00 - Break
16:00-17:15 - Open Space Sessions
17:15-17:30 - Daily Highlights
Friday 19th May
09:00-10:30 - Plenary 5: When a community seems to lack motivation or organizational skills, what can we do?
10:30-11:00 - Break
11:00-12:30 - Parallel Sessions... Tool demo 3: Orthography development related tools; Topic 5: Monitoring the level and quality of participation in our programs; Topic 6: What is the relationship between "participation" and "ownership"? How does this influence what we do as practitioners?
12:30-14:00 - Lunch
14:00-15:30 - Open Space Sessions
15:30-16:00 - Break
16:00-17:15 - Plenary 6: Planning next steps for increasing participation in our programs
17:15-17:30 - Closing
EVENT NARRATIVE