Mijn zoon kan al een tijdje op het potje. Hij is net twee jaar geworden. Hij vindt het fantastisch en we gieren wat af tijdens zijn ‘pipi & popo’! Toch krijg ik regelmatig reacties dat dit raar is (“veel te vroeg!”), en dat ik hem gewoon in zijn luier zijn ding moet laten doen. Vooral toen ik ermee begon toen hij 1 jaar en 3 maanden was — toen hij nog weleens een ongelukje had. Alsof ik te veel van hem vraag. Alsof hij dat nog niet kán.

Ik gun mijn zoon de waardigheid van de pipi en popo op het potje, dus ja: dat was een van de redenen dat ik er bewust voor gekozen heb hem dat al vroeg aan te bieden. Hij maakt er dankbaar en trots gebruik van. Gevolg: een blij kind, een droge broek en een moeder die niet kokhalst bij het wegschrobben van aangekoekte poep op de billen. En dan heb ik het nog niet eens over de kosten- en afvalbesparing.

Het doet me steeds weer denken aan de manier waarop we — vanuit organisaties zoals gemeentes, welzijnsorganisaties en NGO’s — vaak met mensen omgaan. De volwassen versie, zeg maar.

Er wordt nog zo vaak gedacht dat mensen niet zelf op het potje kunnen. Nee, wíj moeten hun luiers verschonen. “We moeten het vóór hen doen, niet met hen.” “We moeten hen niet eens laten weten dat het potje bestaat, want dan scheppen we valse verwachtingen.” “Wat als ze falen? Wat als ze in hun broek plassen?”

En ergens snap ik die reflex. Het is veiliger om de luier te laten zitten. Minder gedoe. Minder risico op ‘ongelukjes’. Minder kans dat iemand zegt: “Hé, maar ik kan dit zelf — mag ik meedoen?”

Maar precies daar, in dat spanningsveld tussen controle en vertrouwen, gebeurt iets interessants.

Want wat ik zie bij mijn zoon, is dit: hij leert niet omdat ik het perfect aanbied. Hij leert omdat hij mag proberen. Omdat hij mag ontdekken. Omdat een ‘ongelukje’ geen falen is. Omdat hij voelt: dit is van mij.

En is dat niet precies waar participatief actieonderzoek — PAO — over gaat?

Niet over het perfecte plan vooraf. Niet over het voorkomen van elk risico. Maar over samen onderzoeken. Samen proberen. Samen leren. Over het durven aanbieden van het potje, zonder de garantie dat het meteen goed gaat.

In veel organisaties zijn we nog geneigd om de kennis, de oplossing en zelfs de verandering zelf te ‘bezitten’. Alsof die organisaties de enigen zijn die weten waar het toilet is, hoe het werkt en wanneer het tijd is om te gaan. Terwijl de essentie van PAO juist is dat kennis ontstaat in de interactie. In het doen. In het soms nét mis mikken.

En ja, dat is rommeliger. Er zijn ongelukjes. Er is twijfel. En hier en daar wat geknoei.

Maar er is ook iets anders: eigenaarschap. Trots. Waardigheid.

Mijn zoon klimt na zijn pipi of popo op de wc om op ‘de grote knop’ te drukken, draait zich dan om, kijkt me aan met een blik die zegt: “Kijk eens wat ik kan”, en springt met een ‘hoeraaaaa!’ in mijn armen. En elke keer denk ik: ja, dit dus! Hij mocht het zelf ontdekken.

Laat dat nou de uitnodiging zijn die onder dit verhaal ligt.

Waar in jouw werk, jouw organisatie, jouw systeem… houden we nog krampachtig de luier vast? En wat zou er gebeuren als we — voorzichtig, speels, misschien een beetje onwennig — het potje gewoon eens neerzetten?

Zonder belofte van perfectie. Maar met vertrouwen in wat er kan ontstaan.

Ik ben benieuwd: waar zie jij het eerste kleine ‘potje-moment’ verschijnen?

The post Het potje, de luier en de illusie van controle appeared first on SevenSenses.

This blog was created during the Ecosystem Restoration Design training that Madelon attended in 2024 and is part of the PAO blog series for ecosystems, in which she shares her views on how PAO can contribute to ecosystem restoration and more.

In January 2022, I travelled in Peru from the Andes highlands to the Amazon region, by bus. Locals said the travel would be beautiful as the landscape becomes greener and greener, going from well over 3000 meters height all the way downhill. I was super excited to go to the Amazon jungle, as I remembered from earlier travels how happy the lush forests used to make me feel. However, the landscape did not become the type of ‘greener’ I had hoped for. For as far as I could see, there were only huge expanses of agricultural fields without any trees or other natural vegetation. I shushed myself with the thought ‘we just need to get some further into the amazon’, but even though on the map it looked like we were far into the Amazon rainforest, it did not look like it at all. Locals say ‘but on the other side of the mountain there is still forest’ but on the other side of the mountain they say the same thing. It made me feel incredibly sad and worried. The Ecosystem Restoration Design course triggered some ideas on possible causes of the degraded landscape and what Participatory Action Research (PAR) could contribute to addressing the complexity of deforestation and creating ownership among stakeholders to tackle the root causes of deforestation.

The problem of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon

When it comes to causes of the massive deforestation and degradation, the course brought me to the following possibilities (that need further research, though). First, cutting trees gives fertile land, so to farmers it makes sense to clear forest where they can (i.e. slash and burn activities), cultivate a few crops and move on to the next piece of land once soil fertility is too low. The agricultural fields I saw in the Peruvian Amazon are large, so I presume we are not talking about smallholder farmers here. It could be that the government stimulates farmers to become bigger by providing subsidies for machineries or free fertilizer. I saw only monocropping, probably because it makes economically sense for a farmer to produce and sell many of the same crops. Finally, if these farmers don’t own the land themselves, they will not be interested in investing energy in planting trees or other long-term efforts. Often I see or hear about dedicated nature lovers who work their asses off trying to convince local stakeholders of the importance of nature, leading to great deception when they are not being heard. The thing is, it is not about convincing people. It’s about hearing all different perspectives (also the ones you might not want to hear) and allowing local stakeholders to co-create solutions based on those perspectives. That’s where Participatory Action Research (PAR) comes in.

Creating ownership to tackle deforestation

To address the problem of deforestation through PAR, the PAR practitioner first needs to orient him/herself to fully understand the current situation. For example, how is land tenure organized? What does the law, rules and regulations (also the informal ones) say? You would also need to further investigate the climax biome, weather patterns, quality of the soil etcetera. Of equal importance, local stakeholders such as the farmers and their families, wholesalers, landowners, local governmental bodies, agroforestry experts et cetera need to be interviewed individually. We need to know their view on the current situation, their desired situation and needs, and what assets (e.g. abundance, manpower, things that go well) and solutions they see. In the same interview, it is important to gain insight in what motivates them to do what they love to do and to learn about their deepest values. That’s what we call System Exploration: the entire system (and all perspectives on the system) in which the problem of deforestation is embedded is being explored.

Once you have all their individual perspectives, you create an overview of their ‘shared truth’ and invite them to come together to reflect on this shared truth. Next, you organize new brainstorm sessions to facilitate them in finding solutions that all of them would benefit from, including nature of course (nature is a stakeholder too!). The agroforestry experts could help think along how to improve the agricultural landscape. I believe that in that way, a sense of ownership is developed among the stakeholders that motivates them to make the execution of their solution(s) a success.

And hopefully, when you travel from the Peruvian highlands to the Amazon region one day, you will see a beautiful lush agroforestry landscape!

Join our trainings!

Want to learn more about Participatory Action Research, for either ecosystem restoration or other complex problems? Join the SevenSenses PAR Practitioners Program!

Rather read more about PAR first? Order my handbook Participatory Action Research (in Dutch) here.

I’m curious to your experiences, let me know!

Madelon

Also read the other blogs in this ‘PAO for ecosystems’ series:

Ecosystem restorers: here’s how to get locals ‘on board’

What Cows Can Teach Us About Sustainable Change

And more will follow!

The post How a Participatory Action Researcher would address deforestation issues appeared first on SevenSenses.

Nederlands, graag!

Last year I excitedly started the Ecosystem Restoration Design Course on Earth Day. Well, now that it has finished I’m even more excited! First and foremost because it made me realize how incredibly easy it can be to ignite restoration of natural ecosystems and let nature do the rest. I don’t need to be a biologist, nor an engineer to give nature a little nudge to restore itself. I joined the course with my Participatory Action Research (PAR) glasses on as I’m curious to see how PAR can contribute to restoring ecosystems and what that would look like. In this first blog I share my thoughts on how to get locals ‘on board’ of your ecosystem restoration project.

“It’s hard to get locals on board!”

The teachers – ecosystem restorers- often speak about the difficulty of getting the local community ‘on board’. They share tips such as: be humble, immerse yourself in the local culture, gain their trust, be transparent and tell them why it is important what you are doing. Although I do agree with most of their tips, I do feel there is something important missing here. It predominantly starts from the idea that local people have to join ‘our’ restoration project – in the form of volunteering, helping to protect the area or at least accepting our work in their area. But in my experience, most people don’t want to join other people’s project, they want to join their own project! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some projects where local people with time really started to gain a sense of ownership over the project, but I believe we need a different starting point to increase this sense of ownership.

Let go of YOUR plan

Here it may get a little tricky and if you have your project design ready and are super eager and motivated to start immediately, you may not want to read it (I suggest you stop reading this blog here, then). What I strongly believe is that the best and most intense sense of ownership among local people is achieved when you get at location without any specific plan. To let go of your ideas on what should be done when and where and how. To first immerse yourself in the area, join the local community activities, just BE there. Have informal conversations with people about their lives, and what gets them up every day. Once you feel you have a basic relation of trust with people, you can start having more in-depth conversations (or interviews if you may want to call it so) about what the area means to them and what challenges they face in using the area (for whatever that may be). What they would like to change for the better. You get to learn so much from locals in what works and what doesn’t, and in my experience, on top of that, people are way more open to your intentions and ideas once they first have been able to share theirs.

Let them co-create their plans

But even then, as a PAR Practitioner, you don’t explicitly share YOUR ideas (yet). You bring all the knowledge and perspectives -gained from your conversations with involved people- (anonymously) together and add yours (also anonymously) only where you feel it contributes to the total body of knowledge. You can do so by making one or more visualisations that reflect their ‘shared truth’. Next, you invite them to reflect on those visualisations together, fill in missing pieces of information, let them draw conclusions and brainstorm on what actions to take. What happens next is always so fascinating to me: when you allow them to do this together, they build upon each other’s ideas and come up with action plans that I (and them individually) would have never thought of! Although your initial plan may look different now, I am sure you can still achieve your goals to restore the ecosystem. But now with people who want to help right from the start because they feel it is also their project!

Courage + patience = ownership!

So, the title of this blog is a little misleading. To me, there’s no such thing as ‘getting locals on board of your project’. What would happen, if you want to restore an ecosystem and you can co-create action plans together with the local community, in which you can still do what you intended to do, yet it is conglomerated and merged with the ideas of the locals? Ideas over which they feel ownership and over which they feel intrinsic motivation to make it a success? It may require some courage to let go of your initial plan and some patience as you can’t start restoring the ecosystem immediately, but I would suggest to anyone who’s in the starting blocks of restoring a piece of land: if you dare, try it out!

Want to get trained in PAR first? Check out the different trainings we offer at the SevenSenses Academy. Or click here for a ‘quick and dirty’ description of the different PAR stages to go through in a typical PAR. Prefer something in between? Order the Handbook Participatory Action Research written by SevenSenses founder Madelon Eelderink (in Dutch).

There’s more blogs following up on PAR for ecosystem restoration design. Want to be the first to know once the next blog is published? Subscribe for SevenSenses stories! Add your email in the footer of this page and click ‘yup, I’m in’!

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People often ask me, “How do I get people motivated to participate in my project?” “How do I create support?” I wish I could give them a magical answer, one like, “oh just do this and then you’ll have them. Delightful, it seems to me. Unfortunately, the reality is different. First of all, people often don’t want to participate in someone else’s project, they mainly want to participate in something of their own. And that’s where it starts. So we have to put energy into making the project “feel its own”. Or better: making the project our own. We can achieve this with Participatory Action Research (PAR).

By applying the basic principles of PAR, we gradually build up the sense of ownership among PAR participants during the PAR process. That ownership can be seen as the feeling that something is “yours,” something for which you feel responsibility and for which you are intrinsically motivated to become active. In practice, you often see that those involved do not get moving because they are ‘ordered’ to do a project or solution that does not feel like theirs. This in itself is not surprising: those involved generally do not want to participate in someone else’s project, they want to participate in their own project! We have to build up that sense of ownership in order to get people to actually start their desired change in a sustainable way. Below are a number of important building blocks of ownership, all of which should receive as much attention as possible in a PAR.

Being heard. The first building block for ownership is, as a participant, being able to express your own perspective to one or more persons -PAR practitioners- who listen from genuine interest and facilitate you in this. For example, it gives -at the beginning of the PAR- recognition of the problem but contributes throughout the PAR process to the feeling of ownership. So, as a PAR practitioner, make sure you continue to listen actively throughout the entire PAR process.

Recognizing your own perspective. A second building block follows once the PAR practitioner shares the initial PAR results, during the ‘Insights Sharing & Solution Identification’ stage. When you’ve displayed this well, participants recognize their perspective in it and see the broader context in which their perspective is embedded. This recognition of one’s own perspective is an important affirmation “that it is allowed to be there” and thus contributes to a sense of commitment and ownership over the situation to be changed. So, as a PAR practitioner, make sure that you get a good picture of participants’ perspectives and allow participants to reflect on them and make additions.

Feeling strenghtened by others. In addition to recognizing your own perspective in the results, the feeling that you are not alone in this is an important building block. In the joint reflection on the results with the participants in a group you get this going. Knowing that others experience the same problem -recognition of the problem- and being able to reflect on this with them is therefore also an important building block for ownership. As a PAR practitioner, therefore, make sure that participants can speak out to each other.

Shared insights. Experiencing eye-openers, ‘aha’ and ‘eureka’ moments together, or discovering something you didn’t know before gives the feeling of ownership an enormous boost. This discovery belongs to the participants and they will appropriate it. This gives new energy and motivation to tackle the situation at hand. During joint analysis with participants at the stage of Insights Sharing & Solution Identification, as a PAR practitioner you give participants the opportunity to make new discoveries themselves.

Choosing together. In a PAR, participants establish a shared ambition in which the new insights are embedded. As a PAR practitioner, you facilitate participants in clarifying the desired situation and shared ambition based on their insights gained. Then, they make their choices together for -in addition to the PAR process- the directions for solutions and the form and content of the action plan. This is one of the most important building blocks of ownership. Participants prioritize and choose (that is, not the PAR person), so it belongs to them. This building block is most prominent at the Insights Sharing & Solution Identification stage, when participants make choices together regarding solution direction(s). As a PAR practitioner, clearly show that they -not you- are making the choices.

Empowering each other. Knowing that what you are doing has a positive influence on the bigger picture that benefits others and vice versa can be enormously motivating. This makes everything you do extra valuable and therefore very useful! That is why it is important for PAR practitioners to understand where solutions and actions reinforce each other. This building block is applicable from the moment solution directions are chosen, i.e. at the stage of Action Plan Co-creation and beyond.

Building a solution together. If, as a PAR participant, you yourself experience the process of building a solution direction into a concrete action plan, nothing is “new” or “uncharted territory” anymore. You influence the co-creation process and recognize all the elements of the action plan. It gets into your blood, so to speak. Therefore, this is one of the most important building blocks of ownership and takes place mainly at the Action Plan Co-creation stage. As a PAR practitioner, you facilitate the participants in building the solution direction together into a concrete action plan and make it clear that, as a PAR practitioenr, you are not co-building yourself.

Formality. Once the result of a nice action plan is there and participants are proud of the result, the next boost for ownership is that this action plan is made formal in one way or another: “it is there and it is really ours!”. This gives the action plan a sense of existence. This takes place at the Formalization & Transfer stage and can be done in many different ways; what is important is that as a PAR practitioner you let participants decide which way of formalization suits them best.

Appreciation. An important building block that is often overlooked is appreciation. Participants are proud of the resulting action plan and like to see that confirmed by appreciation, in whatever form, from the right person or persons. Apart from the appreciation that you as PAR practitioner express throughout the process and encourage participants to express, the appreciation referred to here as a building block is somewhat more formal in nature, is often expressed by an authority actor and occurs primarily at the Formalization & Transfer stage. As a PAR practitioner, consult with your participants what form of appreciation -and by whom- is desired and include this person (or persons) in the communication of your results.

Celebration. The shaping of the action plan can be seen as a success that the group of participants achieved together. Celebrating this outcome -being able to express pride- is an important building block of ownership. The joy that a celebration brings gives extra energy and motivation to get started!

The sense of ownership that PAR triggers, ensures that participants confidently take a role in the action plan and feel responsible for the successful execution of the tasks associated with that role. Once participants have been able to build optimal ownership and motivation and they enthusiastically set about implementing their action plan, one thing is very important: maintain that sense of ownership! Sometimes this feeling is threatened by authority actors who, with their best intentions, want to help those involved – the implementers of the action plan – too much, jeopardizing their sense of autonomy. For example, in municipalities involved municipal officials sometimes want so much for a (citizen) initiative to succeed that they take the lead and pull the initiative towards themselves, as it were. The participants then feel that the initiative no longer belongs to them, but to the municipality. In this way, as a civil servant, you knock all the carefully built-up ownership of participants out from under their feet, and with it the motivation to remain active. So please, don’t!

That is why we as PAR practitioners are keen on this during the Monitor stage. By monitoring initiatives, paying attention to this in reflection sessions with those involved, and making any authority actors aware of this, we can largely prevent this from happening and repair any cracks that may have appeared in time.

Want to learn more about Participatory Action Research? Join our PAR Practitioners Program or order the Handbook Participatory Action Research authored by SevenSenses founder Madelon Eelderink!

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“Madelon, what exactly is the difference between Participatory Action Research and other projects we do at the municipality?” Sometimes you get those questions that you can get hell-bent on! I was at a get-together when an employee of Gemeente Utrecht asked me that question. I took a deep breath and began my story, something along the lines of the following.

Being heard, but individually

A very big difference is often found at the start of the PAR. While many (participation) projects often start with “bringing stakeholders together,” a Participatory Action Research (PAR) starts very differently. Indeed, an important part of the start of a PAR is to talk with people individually, often in the form of a semi- or unstructured interview. In this process, the PAR practitioners do not determine what the conversation is about, but the person opposite us. Out of genuine interest and curiosity, we ask questions and let the people involved tell their own story. As a result, they often feel heard and that is an important building block for the feeling of ownership.

Brainstorming about ‘the shared reality’

Then, when we have spoken to all -if not as many- stakeholders individually, we analyze the conversations and create a visualization of the results. That visualization always represents the shared reality according to all those spoken to. We then share this in so-called focus group sessions, in which we let those involved brainstorm together about the results. There is an important difference here: whereas in many projects the people involved often come with the goal of convincing the other person that they are right, ‘armed’ with all kinds of arguments, with PAR it is much more likely that the participants come out of curiosity about the visualization and in the mode of ‘we are going to brainstorm’. By having stakeholders brainstorm and puzzle with one or more visualizations, we divert attention away from: “I have to have the best arguments.” This often yields tremendously beautiful insights! Here again lie some important building blocks of ownership, which you can read in the blog ‘Building a sense of ownership as a source of motivation among stakeholders’.

Co-creation of their own action plans

Gaining insights together and then co-creating action plans together that suit each of the people involved is one of the coolest things to be able to facilitate, because the energy that arises and the ownership and the desire to get to work is contagious and makes people happy!

We no longer have to try our best to win over the other, because we win together.

What a lot of work!

A PAR is often a huge job on the front end, because you spend so much time individually talking to all those involved, analyzing those conversations and making good visualizations. But after almost 10 years of SevenSenses (in March 2023 already!) and 15 years since my first PAR, I can say with full conviction what an enormous added value it has compared to ‘just quickly bring people together’. Below you can see a model I created based on the differences I see between top-down implementation of projects versus community-up co-creation of projects through PAR.

If you think of the horizontal arrows as time, you see that top-down project design is done pretty quickly, if you come up with something with a small club of professionals from behind your desk. Then you often see that those same professionals are struggling as they have to persuade the community to get on board with their project, or if it gets out of hand, even setting up complaint lines and arranging extra meetings where they get told off and yelled at by the audience. People are angry because they are “suddenly” faced with a project, which they feel is not appropriate. It is not for nothing that residents hate public participation evenings, because “the municipality does what they want anyway!”

PAR often takes a lot longer, but by giving all stakeholders the opportunity to help build a sense of ownership and motivation for the solution, the chances of getting lasting impact are greatly increased. Bonus: those involved often also volunteer to help implement their project. That way you often reach your goal much sooner and easier!

Of course, the above raises a huge number of questions. Because what if those involved come up with things we don’t really want because we already have a solution? How do you conduct such action research in the first place?

Now let me tell you SevenSenses offers trainings just for that! Like the PAR Practitioners Program, where you learn all the PAO skills and if desired can apply them directly in your own work under supervision! Curious? Take a look!

Prefer reading how to do Participatory Action Research? Order the ‘handboek Participatief Actieonderzoek’ authored by SevenSenses founder Madelon Eelderink.

The post How Participatory Action Research makes a difference appeared first on SevenSenses.

So many people, so many perspectives….

When dealing with complex social problems, we are often unaware of the enormous number of different ways of looking at the problem. Often we have a vague idea, such as “Pete probably just wants to make more money,” but that is often all. And then we are surprised that we can’t solve the problem! Or worse, that we want to act quickly out of good will and then get all sorts of people on our roof who had a different perspective…

Take a tree, for example. By itself, of course, a tree is not a complex problem. But it can be part of a complex problem where people can’t figure it out and seem to be diametrically opposed: “the tree has to go” or “the tree has to stay!” – and then we often have the “voiceless” we often forget about, such as nature, animals and future generations… This picture is a (surely incomplete) representation of the perspectives that can exist on “a tree” alone! Perhaps you, dear reader, know of others?

Tackling fast ends up being very slow….

If we want to solve complex issues, it pays to explore those perspectives first. Pretty logical, right? And yet it happens so little! Because it has to be addressed quickly (also quite logical in itself). But then we fail to solve the most pressing problems for decades. In ‘the best’ case, those involved are brought together as quickly as possible to find solutions together.

But those same people involved, thinking that others probably want something different than they do, come to that meeting ‘armed’ with arguments, attack and defense tactics, so that ‘their’ idea will win. Not so good for the atmosphere it seems to me, let alone for a constructive brainstorm and innovative solutions….

The facilitator often stands there helplessly, trying to calm things down, but it is a losing battle, because there is no chance of getting them to brainstorm. Everyone is frustrated and the solution, instead of getting closer, seems further and further away….

How it can be done differently

But fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way at all. As a Participatory Action Researcher (PAR practitioner) you work from the principle that everyone should first be able to share their perspective at ease, without having to defend, explain or justify themselves, and be heard in it. Therefore, in the first phases of the PAR, PAR practitioners often only have individual conversations and interviews with those involved, in which they ask them about their perspective on the current and desired situation, their needs, assets (things that are going well, abundance), solution directions and values. The PAR practitioner analyzes these and makes one or more clear visualization(s) of them. Only then does the PAR practitioner bring those involved together in a series of sessions, carefully weighing who would be best to meet when, in order to ultimately arrive together at a solution that works for everyone.

And then what happens…

At the moment when those involved first sit together in a session, the PAR practitioner does a number of important things that start an effective dynamic between them. He (or she, but let me stick with he) shows the visualization in which all perspectives are reflected, and thus in which the “shared reality” comes out well.

This is still only a rough representation of the results from the conversations; the PAO does not draw any conclusions from it and especially does not give any recommendations or advice. Instead, he asks those involved for their reaction to the visualization, and whether they want to add to it, so that they can then draw their own conclusions and arrive at solutions.

Perhaps somewhat irreverently put, but I always find this a fantastic ‘distraction tactic’. Where otherwise those involved are mainly focused on each other, fighting each other with the best arguments to let their idea ‘win’, now they look together at a visualization (read: their shared reality) and reflect on it. In addition, some interesting things happen. First, stakeholders recognize their own perspective in the visualization and thus feel heard and acknowledged in their perspective. Second, they gain greater understanding of others’ perspectives. Third, they see how the problem outlined is embedded in a broader system of causes and consequences, as well as assets, solution directions and values, and thus expand their knowledge. With these new insights, new possibilities and ideas emerge to address the issue.

From arguing to brainstorming and creating action plans

By comparing and matching the results in certain ways, they can connect the ideas and co-create a joint action plan from that.

Experiencing those “aha moments” together works great for starting a dynamic where all involved feel ownership – after all, their idea is also part of the action plan – and also feel like implementing that action plan together, because they discover how they can strengthen each other.

And even then it’s not easy – change is scary – but as a PAR practitioner you know better than anyone how to guide people through this, so that they can make the desired changes that make them happy.

Well, this -and much more- is the work of a PAR practitioner. Now that you’ve read this blog I’m sure you can think of situations – whether or not you watch the news – in which PAR can be used. Perhaps in your own work?

If you are interested in also learning how to apply PAR to address complex problems with many stakeholders, join the PAR Practitioners Program!

Will we see you soon at the SevenSenses Action Research Academy?

Greetings, also on behalf of the trainers,

Madelon – Founder SevenSenses

The post Why people argue… And how it can be different appeared first on SevenSenses.

A blog written by Anouk Menko, participant of the SevenSenses ‘Education Talent Challenge’ 2016, Kenya

Last couple of weeks i’ve been talking to many different people in Lunga Lunga about talent and education. It showed me how important it is to be here, and get all their different perspectives. I would like to share these perspectives with you. If you have anything to add, please do!

Talent and education, what does it actually mean? Let’s start with the most general definition. Google tells me that education teaches people how to function within society, talent on the other hand is a natural ability to be good at something, especially without being taught.

For me both definitions sound a bit vague. Many questions pop up in my mind. How does this work in informal settlements like Lunga Lunga where education is not available for everyone but their social connectedness is more alive than any other place i’ve ever been. Talent on the other hand seems to be widespread here, so they are good in things without being taught, but they are struggling to make a living out of it. What is missing? Could a combination of talent and education be the solution? 

Talking to several people that are part of different youth organizations within Lunga, taught me that life is a journey of meeting the right people, sharing knowledge, working hard and inspiring the next generation.

Most of them started exploring their talents (e.g. art, dance, yoga, acrobatics) because they couldn’t afford to go to secondary school/college. It is not the easiest way. Many drop-outs start selling drugs or become thieves. Selling drugs is a quick way of earning money, and with not that many opportunities around, it is an easy way to follow. But luckily the people i met prefered to take the right path. This is how:

The people i spoke with all gave me 1 or 2 names that have been very important in their lives. They inspired them, shared their knowledge, motivated them to grow their talents and created an opportunity and a place for them to do so. Having a role model seems to be crucial as the first years of this journey are challenging. 9 out of 10 performance will not pay you, paintings will not sell etc. It is easy to quit and start earning quick money in a different way. But you are learning, you are growing as an artist and you have a purpose. 

That 1 performance that does pay you gives you opportunities to grow further. This money can be used to follow a course, for example marketing or English. This is where education comes in. You developed your talent but you need to sell your talent as well. If you want to make it, you have to speak English and know how to promote your art/skills. You have to be able to read a contract and network your way around. Meeting the right people can get the ball rolling. Most of the artist even had some performance abroad. Apparently African arts are more appreciated outside Africa than inside, whats making it quite hard for artist to start up in Africa.

What i found most inspiring so far is how they are not going after the money but are giving back to the community. They are teaching the next generation, creating opportunities that will prevent them from taking the wrong path. They are even using their talent to educate people. A dance play about epilepsy or teaching eco-yoga  to make people aware of climate change and let them connect with nature again are some of the great examples i heard.

Carefully drawing up a conclusion, one could say that education and talent are way more intertwined here than in the Netherlands. It is learning by doing and doing it with your heart that gets you further step by step.

Talking about steps, next step in this action research will be a workshop to generate new ideas of combining talent and education to fulfil the needs within the community (these needs are currently being researched by my fellow colleagues Guyonne and Sylvia).

The post Life is a journey of meeting the right people, sharing knowledge, working hard and inspiring the next generation appeared first on SevenSenses.

During this three-month Internship, you will receive seven two-weekly Guidance Sessions online. It is important that PPP participants start their internship around the same time, so that everybody can get the best out of the Guidance Sessions. The Guidance Sessions take place on Monday evenings from 19.00 to 21.00 o’clock, every two weeks, via Zoom. The Sessions are there to guide you during your internship. They are very useful as you exchange experiences, tips and feedback with your peers, guided by one of our experienced SevenSenses certified PAR Trainers.

Although a PAR Cycle usually takes three months, this may differ substantially per setting. If you finish a PAR Cycle sooner than in three months, you can start a new PAR Cycle in the same setting if you like. If your PAR Cycle takes longer than three months, please don’t feel rushed by our PPP program. You can of course continue after the three-month internship period, it’s just that there will be no more PPP Guidance Sessions after those three months. If you wish to continue the Guidance Sessions, you can purchase extra sessions for €135,- per hour. If your peers also wish to purchase extra sessions, you can form a group and split costs (the price stays the same up to eight participants).

As early as possible, start arranging your internship placement so you can start your own PAR by september 2023. You can develop your own internship or -if available- join one of the SevenSenses internship placements. From the first week of the TT, we will discuss what suits you best and go through the different options. Together we make sure you can acquire all of them!

The post Regarding the Internship (Training & Internship Track) appeared first on SevenSenses.

My goodness… SevenSenses is already 10 years old! I can’t escape the tendency to let some reflections run through my head. Then images pop up of the start of SevenSenses in 2013, with that man at the Chamber of Commerce who looked at me with a raised eyebrow while I stutteringly explained what Participatory Action Research is. And a father who made a kind of primal sound with wide eyes when I announced the existence of SevenSenses: “Huuuuuuhhh! Would that be a good idea in these times of economic crisis?!”

Still, it felt good, even though I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into with my well-meaning one-man business.

Could I have known that 10 years later we would be working with an enormous network of Participatory Action Researchers and other passionate people?!

All beginnings are difficult, and the feeling of the ‘market stall in the empty desert’ really lasted for a few more years. Still, I’m glad I persevered, because I see what Participatory Action Research (PAR) can do in society. Apart from the innovative solutions that those involved in a social problem come up with together and great initiatives that they set up and implement – after all the main goal of a PAR – I also see the enormous impact it makes on the ‘soft side’.

It is always overwhelming, the reactions that I – we – receive from PAR participants, who feel (“finally!”) heard, empowered, build a network, learn from each other, gain more self-confidence and energy and ‘look forward to life again’, you name it. They also often gain more trust in each other and in involved organizations – even if they had to come a long way, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, that’s nice at the locations where a Participatory Action Research has taken place, but if we really want to make an actual turnaround, we have to do a lot more PAR. Systems are getting horribly stuck (think of the healthcare system, the market, the government) and we are experiencing more and more problems. Then you need large-scale disruptive work, and from there, let those involved build something together on the basis of equality that suits them all. That is exactly what PAR does.

We therefore have to carry out PAR in the same places for a longer period of time and more often in new places, on several complex problems at the same time. In my opinion, we are only at the beginning of that tilt with SevenSenses. But such a tilt can suddenly go very fast and could yield very cool things!

Do you want to contribute to that tilt? Fantastic, because as you will understand, many more PAR’s are needed!

And as of today… the new PAR Practitioners Program is open for subscription! It’s THE program in which you gain all the knowledge and skills about PAR in order to make an impact. In your work, or perhaps on a completely different subject than your work, but something that is really close to your heart! It is up to you.

Do we see you soon at the SevenSenses Academy?

Kind regards, also on behalf of my fellow trainers Denise, Geertjan, Minke, Wout, Sandra en Wilma,

Madelon

The post From raised eyebrows and primal sounds to a gigantic network appeared first on SevenSenses.

Technological developments have moved us away from contact with strangers. Since we all have our phones with us, we never have to ask people the time or where the nearest busstop is. And when waiting for the bus, we find our phones more interesting than the people waiting next to us. Corona has not helped either as it forced us to keep distance or even stay home, giving us a hard time to talk with strangers as well. And the less we do it, the more unnatural and uncomfortable it feels to do it.  

As a Participatory Action Researcher you have a lot of conversations with strangers. Seriously, a LOT. I recently realized how often I get the question of how to talk with strangers when initiating a Participatory Action Research. How to make that first move. So I decided, why not write a blog about it?

What I like about conversations with strangers, is that when you apply basic PAR principles such as listening non-judgmentally and from genuine curiosity, without getting in debate or giving solutions, you get the finest stories. Stories about real life as people perceive it from their deepest selves. The actual raw stories that teach you more about life than any book.

But how do we start such conversation?

When we initiate a Participatory Action Research, we first make a Participatory Action Research design to see what the goal of our PAR is, who to involve, what PAR-methods to apply et cetera. From there we can make a plan of things to do. Most of the time this involves having informal conversations with people about the PAR-subject. But there comes the big question: how do we approach those people? How do we start such conversation? The answer I think is simple -just do it!- but not easy.

Here are some tips.

• 1. Get comfortable yourself. First of all, we have to get rid of that confining idea of that it is ‘stupid’ to approach a stranger – and the uncomfortable feeling that comes along with it. We have to get back to that feeling of when it was normal to approach people (if at all you are old enough to have ever felt that). I think here it is a matter of just doing it -a lot- and enjoy all your inner assumptions being tackled in each and every conversation.
• 2. Ask first. Once you approach someone, ask whether you may ask a question at all and respect (and don’t feel bad) if you get a ‘no’.
• 3. Be you. Don’t start off with an entire introduction of your PAR, you may ‘lose’ them halfway. Rather ask the question as being you yourself as a fellow human, not as the action researcher. Once you feel along the conversation that they are interested, at the end of it you can tell them about your PAR and even invite them to participate.
• 4. Be creative. You can approach people ‘clean’, without any tools or ‘tricks’, but you can also make it a little more fun or interesting to talk with you. For example, go sit somewhere on a busy plaza with a can of coffee to offer to people passing by. Hire a funny bus and invite people in to talk about the PAR-subject, drive people around in a tuc tuc, whatever you may come up with that triggers people’s interest! In our latest Participatory Action Research, my colleague Wilma van der Vlegel came up with a great idea to get in contact with strangers. Our purpose was to have a first informal conversation with people about how they perceive their health, and then invite them for an in-dept interview later on. We bought tangerines and put eye-stickers on it. We asked people passing by to draw a mouth on the tangerine that represents how ‘fit’ they feel now. That helped us start the conversation and many of the people we met there joined the entire PAR! I dubbed it ‘the Tangerine-method’

• 5. Keep your questions simple, open and positive. Need I say more?
• 6. Don’t judge, get into debate or pose your opinion or solutions to them. People did not ask for your opinion or help, so respect whatever they say, whether you agree or not.
• 7. Don’t make any notes of the conversation. This helps to keep an informal, accessible atmosphere.
• 8. Be genuinely interested. People will notice whether you are genuinely interested or whether you ‘want to recruit people for your PAR’. And it makes a difference to whether they will give you their time and viewpoints or not. Being genuinely curious to the other’s viewpoint also helps a great deal in formulating new questions based on the answers you get and to get ‘the flow’.
• 9. Know where to stop. Use your senses to know when it is time to stop the conversation. Don’t try to ‘get more out of people’. Rather have a good short talk and get the person’s contact to talk more later than a longer one and an agitated person!
• 10. Enjoy! People will enjoy when they see you enjoy the conversation. Win-win!

Once you apply these tips an afternoon in the park or wherever you find strangers, I am convinced you will return home feeling energized, inspired and boosted with new confidence. Let alone the set of beautiful, ‘raw’ stories and new contacts you have for your PAR!

So go out, let your natural curiosity flow and you will be surprised how great a conversation with a stranger can be!

Want to learn more about informal conversations or other PAR-methods? Get the second edition of ‘Handboek Participatief Actieonderzoek. Samen bouwen aan een betere wereld’, written by SevenSenses founder Madelon Eelderink.

Do you want to learn PAR skills? Now you can subscribe PAR Practitioners Program!

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