February 22, 2011

Here’s a video below in Haitian-Creole done by group leader Alex Myril. This is one of the 40 Open Space meetings taking place right now. These Open Space meetings have anywhere between 20 and 100 people and are part of the USAID funded Civic Empowerment project we’re doing with 1,000 educators and grassroots leaders.

The groups have met weekly over three months to receive training by two Haitian facilitors in Open Space and Touchstones Discussion methods. The groups study the Haitian Constitution using the Touchstones Discussion method.

The pair of two facilitators working with each group receive compensation for this. There are ten pairs of facilitators–a total of 20 facilitators–and each pair trains four different groups of 25 participants each, which comes to 1,000 people. Each group has a group leader, like Alex, who volunteers his or her time, receiving no monetary compensation, to help make sure groups stay motivated and that the meeting place is always prepared in advance. Group leaders serve as liaisons between the groups and the two compensated facilitators. In most cases the group leaders have also assembled the groups of 25 participants.

Click here to learn more about this project.