Juanita and I, along with Mariah from the World Cafe community and Austin from YES! www.yesworld.org, had a wonderful daylong inter-generational dialogue on May 2. It was on the theme of "Sharing Our Gifts and Privileges for Social Change".
1) Think of 1-2 experiences in your life where you first became
aware of a gift or privilege you had (first everyone drew a bit on the table, and then they shared those experiences with their table); 2) How are
those gifts and privileges manifesting in your life today? -- We had a beautiful harvest of the gifts and privileges in the room after this -- 3) Where do you feel
blocked or challenged in your gifts and privileges? (silent time for free-writing first) and 4) If you could have any support to unleash
those blocked spaces, what would it be? (sharing with a partner, then harvesting with the whole group).
It was rich and super powerful
to see what all was present in the room. And to notice how similar strengths and challenges lived among each of the generations.
In fact, what was great was the ability to have an inter-gen day where
people didn't feel overly-identified or boxed by their ages, and were
instead able to listen, share, speak, receive, play, etc. together as a
community.
The collaboration among Juanita, Mariah, Austin and I also made this day special. We really took the time to craft the day, having several co-creative conversations, each bringing our strengths and passions and energy to the day. Of course, working together for the first time also meant that we could have had stronger transitions and connections between the pieces. But that is space for growing further, as we see the potential of more inter-generational spaces on this theme in the near future!
Sharing Our Gifts and Privileges for a Better World
by Shilpa Jain
Jun 12, 2010
About 24 people participated in the day, which consisted of a combination of World Café and YES! activities, which were designed to open up and look at our privileges, gifts and power; our sense of a better world and social change; and our capacities to use what we have to make a difference. This builds on a week-long program of a similar theme that has been going on for the last eight years, but has primarily worked with 18-35 year-olds. (See www.yesworld.org/lpsc2010 for more details on that program.)
We had a delightful cafe in the morning where we explored four questions:
1) Think of 1-2 experiences in your life where you first became aware of a gift or privilege you had (first everyone drew a bit on the table, and then they shared those experiences with their table);
2) How are those gifts and privileges manifesting in your life today? -- We had a beautiful harvest of the gifts and privileges in the room after this --
3) Where do you feel blocked or challenged in your gifts and privileges? (silent time for free-writing first) and
4) If you could have any support to unleash those blocked spaces, what would it be? (sharing with a partner, then harvesting with the whole group).
It was rich and super powerful to see what all was present in the room. And to notice how similar strengths and challenges lived among each of the generations.
In fact, what was great was the ability to have an inter-gen day where
people didn't feel overly-identified or boxed by their ages, and were
instead able to listen, share, speak, receive, play, etc. together as a
community.
The collaboration among Juanita, Mariah, Austin and I also made this day special. We really took the time to craft the day, having several co-creative conversations, each bringing our strengths and passions and energy to the day. Of course, working together for the first time also meant that we could have had stronger transitions and connections between the pieces. But that is space for growing further, as we see the potential of more inter-generational spaces on this theme in the near future!