PARTY Handbook Digital Platform
Practical guide to service design in development context.
Welcome to the digital platform of PARTY handbook, a collection of the tools tested during the workshops made by PARTY researchers and designers in the first two years and a half of the project. The workshops have been made with different actors and in different locations (Namibia and South Africa). The tools have been collected, selected and edited into one book. This toolbook has been designed to be a practical manual to be used to organize and run workshops with marginazed communities and more specific with the San Community. The tools are divided into the following design phases:
PARTY PROJECT
Participatory development with the youth.
PARTY is an international and inter-sectoral project coordinated by University of Lapland. Project focuses on developmental cooperation through research and innovation staff exchanges and sharing knowledge between researchers, the target group, local actors and Southern Africa and international aid organisations.
The challenges faced by the marginalized youth in developing countries, such as unemployment, are not simple or easily solved. This influenced by a number of factors including levels of education, gender, self-estee,. geographic location, physical ability and transport. Employment and educational opportunities are two factors which impact on the future success of young individuals. PARTY aims to endorse human development and assist in reducing youth unemployment by increasing the involvement and inclusion of young people in service development in South Africa and Namibia by using participatory and exploratory service design tools.
The project focuses on San youth and young adults (13-24 years of age), especially living in poor or otherwise marginal conditions who either are or face the risk of becoming marginalized. The project advances service design approach in the field of developmental research and at the same time develops innovative, participatory methodology and tools for developmental cooperation.
PARTY members have been worked with: The San students living in Windhoek (Namibia) who are part of the association. / The San students of !Khwa ttu, training center of San youth based in the Western Cape, 100km from Cape Town (South Africa). / The San youth living in Platfontein, Kimberley (South Africa) who are related with SASI association. / The San students of the N||uu language school, Rosedale, Upington (South Africa).
WORKING WITH THE COMMUNITIES
Communities are sociological entities; they are the ecosystem of interactions and behaviors based on common values and expectations between their consider genders, what is our religious belief, how are the economical conditions and resources or our political ideals: in few words communities differ on the basis of their identity, on what it is good or evil.
So, when people from different cultures meet, different sets of behaviors, symbols and beliefs meet often generating misunderstanding.
If you are called to work in a community which is not yours you should take into consideration and start building your actions on:
-Creating the awareness that different communities have different assumptions.
-Building the knowledge about different behaviors and assumptions.
-Defining and teaching those skills needed to create communication between cultures.
FACILITATING A WORKSHOP
The scope of this manual is to support local communities to express their potential in a series of participatory actions.
These actions are often in the form of workshops with different formats like meetings, brainstorming sessions, creative workshops or jams, which need someone to start the action and follow a co designing process.
There are many different names to describe this role: Animator, mobilizer, activist: we prefer facilitator.
Even if you have a think as a designer, being a facilitator is something different. The facilitator is someone in charge of setting the right mood for the session, being the bridge between the different souls of a community, supporting the members of the group in a workshop, promoting knowledge transfer and interaction between people and enhancing co-creation.
Facilitate is all about reputation: impartially, being open minded and applying “active listening”(starting the discussion from what has been perceived by the audience) is crucial for the success of the participatory session.
ENGAGING
Eight mindsets for developing in development context.
THINKING
ME, ME+ and ME++ levels.
The participatory process described in this manual aims to provide Service Design tools to the youth members willing to active themselves as agents of change within their community. It is a process based on the principles of Design Thinking, structured in phases and steps that have the goal of increasing the awareness of the participants about the possibility to create common services, to generate ideas, to produce small actions to support the social life of the communities or sustainable businesses.
The participatory process described in this manual aims to provide Service Design tools to the youth members willing to active themselves as agents of change within their community. It is a process based on the principles of Design Thinking, structured in phases and steps that have the goal of increasing the awareness of the participants about the possibility to create common services, to generate ideas, to produce small actions to support the social life of the communities or sustainable businesses.
The phases of the process are four and represent the four stages of development of a participated project: Self-awareness, Participation, Evolution, Action. As any conceptual model, it has being conceived to identify the logic of the process. As for many other Design Thinking models, the process is not necessarily linear: many activities and tools described in one phase can be iteratively in different moments and applied to reach different goals, asking for individuals involvement as well as group and teams ones.
All phases of the process aim help the youth to understand the position it covers in the community, amplifying the sense of belonging and giving the opportunity to young individuals to have a productive role in it. The process starts by building an empathetic relation with the members of the community progressively providing capacities to implement an empowering action from the individuals sphere of the single participant (ME, as a young adult) to its relationship with the local community (ME+, me and my community) and with a wider, sometimes global, scenario (ME++, me and the youth of the World)
ME, ME+, ME++
Communities have a fuzzy boundaries. If once we could have imagined a village hundreds of kilometers, by the effect of the global digitalization, it is much more difficult to understand the limits of the pattern of human interactions. On the contrary, in spite we consider the World as a unique “global village”, all individuals are part of specific communities, more than one at the same time.
Therefore engaging the members of a community in a participatory process have to take into consideration how to appeal the individuality of each participant, understanding how personal capabilities, values and visions could trigger a community action, as well as the feeling of belonging to a local group or even larger and “blurrier” one.
We defined these three levels as ME, ME+ and ME++. The definition of the boundaries of these three levels varies from context, from action to actio, and represents the first element to define in the participatory processes.
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ME: Level of the individuals
It is the level of individuals, with their personal beliefs, skills and behaviors. Especially in an hyper individualistic society every participatory action have to start considering the drive to satisfy the inner needs of safety, belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization of the individuals.
ME+: Level of inmediate interactions
It is the level of immediate interactions of the individuals, manly related to the family or the close local community. It is the level in which the interactions occurs with people of the same kind, the one in which we feel to be part of a group. The sense of belonging to these local community is often based on the bonds created by the shared identity, the habits and traditions of the group.
ME++: Global level
It is the level we can acces by using social media that makes us feeling to be part of a larger group. It is the level in which the individuals open themselves to the others and to the diversity. The interaction occurs within similar groups in different contexts (the Youth of the World) or between different people bridging different cultures.
CASE STUDIES
Examples of PARTY Handbook application.
PLATFONTEIN RADIO STATION CASE STUDY.
CONTACT US
We want to know more about you.
Don't hesitate to contact us in partyhandbook@gmail.com.