5.3
Identifying Your Communities
Submitted by Janice McMillan
This activity opens up the conversation and makes visible the many different understandings of the term “community.” Its meaning is often taken for granted. Participants also explore how they feel in relation to certain communities or how they exclude certain people from communities they are a part of.
Learning Goals
Develop a nuanced understanding of community.
Critically reflect on practices of inclusion and exclusion.
Instructions
Set Up: Prepare for the Activity
Provide participants with, or if doing this online ask them to have with them, drawing materials, like paper, pens, pencils, and/or markers, if they would like to draw during the activity.
Organize participants into small groups (3-4 ppl).
Begin by introducing the learning goals of this activity.
Step One: Individually Reflect on Community (10 min)
Invite participants to independently reflect on the following questions and write a few thoughts down or draw their response:
What does community mean for you?
What communities do you feel a part of?
Step Two: Generate a List of Characteristics that Constitute Community (20 min)
In small groups, invite participants to share what they have written or drawn.
Have participants reflect on the responses shared as they discuss the following questions:
What for your group makes up “community"?
What are the characteristics of a community?
Ask participants to then generate a list of characteristics that define community for their group. Invite each group to share this list on a board, shared screen, or other surface visible to everyone.
Step Three: Debrief as a Full Group (20 min)
Encourage participants to refer to the list of characteristics generated in their small groups as they discuss these questions:
Do you feel part of the university, workplace, or broader community where you are based? Why/why not?
Are there spaces where you feel like you belong and spaces in which you feel excluded?
TIME
50
min
MODULE
Civic Collaboration
This activity can be completed by any discussion group.
This activity can be used to support facilitation skills. See Sample Facilitation Certificate Program Design to illustrate sample sequencing.
This activity can be used to build trust and interpersonal connection.
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0 Comments
July 26, 2023 at 6:24:34 PM
YD
December 3, 2022 at 2:11:54 AM
Activity 5.3 gives participants to use writing, drawing, and/or speaking to share and discuss the various communities they belong to and/or feel excluded from, the various aspects that define community, as well as the practices of inclusion or exclusion and power distribution in these communities.