TECNICAS EXPERIMENTALES Y EQUIPOS 1 Molino y Técnica de Molienda

A meditation – visualisation exercise can be used to help children, young people (and adults) to dream about their children’s groups, their communities and their role as agents of peace in the future. The participants draw their dreams/visions on ‘fruit shape’ paper. The pictures of their dreams are shared and a tree image is used to explore what individual and collective strengths they have to build upon (the roots), and what strategy / action planning is still required to work towards their dreams.

Key Objectives:

To help children, young people (and/or adults) to visualise and creatively express their role as agents •

of peace

To support children, young people (and adults) in identifying individual and collective strengths that •

can be built upon to support their role as agents of peace.

To support children, young people (and adults) in identifying support, action plans and strategies to •

help strengthen their role as agents of peace, and their children’s peace initiatives so that they may more effectively move towards their vision.

Time Needed: approximately 75-90 minutes (40 minutes for visualisation and 40 minutes for creating tree and action planning)

Key Steps:

Children/ young people (and/or adults) are encouraged to find a quiet place to lie/sit down comfort- •

ably, to close their eyes, and to breathe deeply. They are asked to imagine how their children’s peace initiatives and children’s groups could develop in the future. They should dream about their role as agents of peace in their local communities, and even broader in their national communities.

Encourage them to dream about their role, their initiatives, their groups, the kinds of interactions they •

have in their families, schools, communities, as well as with government officials or other key stake- holders. Dream about their role and the kinds of changes that they can see in their families, schools, communities, nation as a result of their positive efforts. How are children and adults interacting with each other? How are adults from different backgrounds interacting? dream, dream… give a few min- utes silence to dream and visualize…

After 5-8 minutes of meditation the children / young people are asked to draw their individual dreams •

on a ‘fruit shape’ paper. Fruit shape paper, pencil and crayons are given for the task.

Once the drawings are complete (allow 10-15 minutes) the shape of a large tree (on big sheets of •

flipchart stuck together) is placed in front of all the participants. Collectively the participants build the tree where:

The fruit represents their vision/dream (individual and collective) •

The roots will represent their individual and collective strengths •

The trunk will represent their strategy and action planning to strengthen what they are doing, and to gain •

more adult support to reach their vision.

Each child/ young person is encouraged to present their dream – their fruit and to stick it on the tree. •

Collectively, the participants are then supported to explore and record their suggestions for the roots •

of the tree – use different colour post-its to represent and record different levels: individual strengths, the strengths of their children’s clubs/ associations; the strengths of NGO partners; and strengths of SCN.

Finally, the participants share their ideas for the trunk – the strategy and action planning ideas, includ- •

ing any additional support needed from adults (including SCN) that will help them to strengthen their peace initiatives/groups and to move towards their vision.

One way of developing the strategy is do a how? how? how? exercise. Strategic and practical suggestions for action can be presented and then explored further by asking the question HOW? and HOW again about how exactly

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children’s participation in peace building can be promoted. 







 





 Facilitators Notes:

Following the workshop efforts could be supported to further develop the ‘visualisation of the vision. •

For example, the children and young people could be supported to work with mural artists to create large scale visual images/ murals in their local communities/ town.

The use of the visioning tool can be used to complement other activities and tools – for example, •

the balloon activity in Phase IIa and/or any activities or tools that require an element of visioning to strengthen existing initiatives or support action planning.

Don’t forget that it may be a good idea to break up the visioning exercise into 3 steps – the vision, the roots •

and the trunk – and combine this with use of circle analysis and peace building balloon as outlined above

As illustrated by the feedback from Uganda below, due to difficult experiences •

faced during the conflict period there is a possibility that some participants may still see negative things when visioning. Psycho-social support should be made available for anyone who needs it.



Feedback from participants in Uganda (from national capacity building workshop): The visioning was

very impressive. We learnt how to explore our vision and what would happen if there was peace. I liked this session very much and I learnt what is at the back of people’s minds... The facilitation was very good and I had the chance to improve my art and everyone had the chance to share their drawings on peace…. I was amused by the visioning session where we could sleep and dream. I dreamt of peace and we had gone back to our original place in the village.

However, during the visioning session in Northern Uganda some people showed fear which is understandable when you think about the difficult experiences they have faced and lived through. They saw peace in their vision, but some fears (such as seeing rebels approaching and having their houses burnt down) were also seen, as they see what has happened to them in their past. We can keep encouraging our friends and support them to overcome difficult experiences that they have faced and to have hope for the future. We hope people can develop a vision of peace, but it is also understandable when people want to express their fears.

Materials Needed:

Shapes of fruit cut out on A4 paper •

Sets of coloured crayons •

Pencils and erasers •

Large shape of tree drawn out on flipchart stuck together (Flipchart paper, pens and tape) •

CIRCLE ANALYSIS OF WHAT ROLE CHILDREN ARE PLAYING AND CAN