Theme 1: Starting with Ourselves
Open the session with an activity to encourage people to bring their whole selves and their stories into the room. “How do we know what we know?” and “Rivers of Life” are activities that invite each person to open up, connect, understand each other’s contexts, and validate broader sources of knowledge and power. Use these or other activities as a jumping off point to get to know each other and build trust.
Activity 1: How do we know what we know?
Activity 1: How do we know what we know?
We all learn in different ways. In this activity, we think about our formal education and the various ways we have learned through life experience. We introduce how feminist popular education can contribute to liberating forms of learning.
Materials: Coloured markers, sticky notes or coloured cards, flipchart paper, tape, copies of handout: Listening beyond words
Plenary: Introduce the activity. Read Listening beyond words aloud and then invite people to brainstorm answers.
- What did the organisers fail to see in this case? Why?
- What assumptions lay behind their decisions?
- How does such a lack of awareness impact power dynamics within the group? And externally?
- What was learned in the story? Was anything unlearned?
Reflect on different ways of learning and knowing. We all learn in different ways – not only with our minds but also with our hearts and bodies. Some learn through reading and some through doing, while others are visual learners. Feminist popular education encourages us to critically question what we have learned and the underlying assumptions we carry, and to integrate our different ways of knowing the world.
Next, distribute post-its or cards and sheets of flipchart paper. Explain that the next step is for personal reflection and won’t be shared with the group.
Individually: Draw the outline of a person on your sheet. Ask yourself:
- What are the different ways of learning in all parts of my life?
- Which do I value most now and why? Anything I have had to “unlearn” or question?
- What conditions enable me to learn best?
Write your thoughts on post-its or cards. Place each one on the heart, mind, or part of the body on your outline.
Small groups: Each of four small groups focuses on a different question. Groups select a moderator, a person to take notes, and a person to share in plenary.
- Group 1: Did our formal education take our lived experience into account?
- Group 2: How did our formal education portray the value and history of our communities, country, and the world?
- Group 3: What values and beliefs were reinforced by our formal education, and what values and beliefs were discounted?
- Group 4: What does our formal education say about who teaches, who has knowledge, and who learns?
Plenary: Groups take turns to share their thoughts. Invite discussion about formal education, drawing out the ways in which it can discount our lived experiences, distort history, reflect patriarchal and racist beliefs, and replicate colonial and capitalist values. Ask:
- What assumptions lay under the surface about who has knowledge, who doesn’t, whose knowledge counts, and what knowledge is and what it isn’t?
- How do these assumptions relate to and reinforce inequities of power and privilege?
- What are the implications of this kind of formal education (sometimes called banking education for ‘depositing’ knowledge in people’s minds) for those seeking liberation from oppression?
- How can we educate ourselves in ways that are liberating?
Note key points on flipchart. Point out that, without bringing consciousness in this way to what we “know” and why we know it (particularly as that is shaped by our identity – class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc – and how that positions us in the world), we may easily replicate power inequities and other oppressive dynamics within our communities, organisations, and movements. (We will go into this more fully in Chapter 4.) To close, introduce or remind the group about feminist popular education, particularly its focus on learning and unlearning in a way that catalyses change and liberation. Connect ideas on the flip chart summary to ways that feminist popular education as a political practice is liberating.
Download this activity.
Listening beyond words
An experience shared by Patricia Ardón, JASS
Many years ago, when I was very young, I worked in an organisation that was introducing household taps (faucets) for drinking water for rural and Indigenous communities. To raise awareness and encourage community participation, the organisation used popular education processes. With the community members, the organisation chose a specific community in which to introduce this scheme for potable water. Male and female promoters from this community participated in the process.
We held a series of meetings with leaders and with community members via assemblies. As in the past — and as still happens in many communities — men dominated the conversation. Women rarely spoke, except when specific women’s spaces were created, which was infrequent at the time. Both women and men, albeit fewer women than men, also conducted community surveys. Finally, after months of work, it was decided that conditions were ripe for introducing household faucets. The premise was that putting faucets in the houses would benefit the women, as this would lessen their workload, since they had to walk to the public water collection tank — or sometimes even to the river — to collect water. At that time, the concept of gender-differentiated impacts was practically unknown to most people, but we had already gone through some basic training and sensitization on the subject.
When the faucets were installed, our great surprise was that most of the women were unhappy with this modality. Upon further investigation, we realized that the women felt they had lost the only space where they could socialize with each other, talk about what was happening in their lives, what they were going through with their partners, their joys and sorrows, their children, and their families. The public water collection tank — and sometimes the river –were their only places of coexistence and exchange. And it was also the only space — or one of the very few spaces — where they had the possibility of mingling beyond the control of their male partners. And of course, most of the men were happy that they did not leave their homes because (among other reasons) when they did go out, they found out about things like the men’s “infidelities.”
This experience impressed me profoundly and has stayed with me. It led me to reflect more deeply not only on how we sometimes get carried away by appearances or by what may be beneficial (or not) for other groups of people, but also on the importance of investigating what is behind what we are seeing and hearing — beyond the words themselves — especially in the lives of women. Furthermore, it has helped me to reflect on the different ways we learn — some of us learn more through concrete experience or observation; others learn more through study, or in many other ways.
Download handout: Listening beyond words.
Find out more about Feminist Popular Education.
Activity 2: Rivers of Life
Activity 2: Rivers of Life
Materials: Large pieces of paper (A3 or half of flip chart) and coloured markers for each person.
Plenary: Introduce the activity. Invite people to draw a river to show the key moments that have shaped your lives and the pivotal experiences (positive or negative) that have awakened you to injustice, inequality, power, or liberation.
Individually: Think about the experiences that have shaped your life and made you who you are. Draw a river that traces your life journey. Zoom in on four or five key moments of awakening about oppression, injustice, inequality, power, struggle, or liberation. These experiences may have been difficult or joy-filled; they may have been individual or collective. Show these pivotal moments either along the river itself (for example, as streams flowing into it, bends, rapids, waterfalls, dams, swamps, or reflective pools) or along the shore (for example, people, experiences, conflicts, bridges, turning points). Use images, colours, and as few words as possible.
Small groups – or if time allows in plenary: Take five-minute turns to show and discuss your river. Only share what you want to and hold each other’s words in confidence.
- What was it about each experience that was so important?
- How did these experiences impact and change you?
- How have they shaped who you are today?
- What insights, values, and visions do you bring from these experiences to this collective?
- Are there any particular cultural symbols that represent this for you?
Agree on moments or experiences that you found in common to share with the larger group.
Plenary: Each group briefly shares insights or common experiences. You can keep details confidential.
- What did you learn about yourself in this activity?
- Did you have any ‘aha’ moments listening to other people’s stories? (Don’t give details of someone else’s story – only your own moment.)
As a facilitator, draw out the ways in which the heart, mind, and body all shape our experience, memory, and knowledge.
- How do these experiences in our hearts, minds, and bodies affect our leadership and change work now?
- How do they affect our wellbeing, spirit, and energy?
- What insights can we draw from this about our particular contexts and histories?
Repeat or continue this exercise if you like, to enable people to show where their rivers are heading, for example by drawing many streams joining together towards the ocean or diverging streams forming a delta with many ways forward.
Download this activity.
