Offering
the World Café to African Women
with Disabilities:
A Story of my Own
Becoming 'Differently-Abled'!
By Mille Bojer
"I'm in!"
That was my excited response when I heard that 35-40 women from across Africa were coming to my town, Johannesburg, to inspire each other, give each other ideas and tools for their work, and to set up a new African network of women with disabilities, focused on reproductive health and HIV/AIDS.
I got the news on the 11th of October 2001 from my colleague Marianne Knuth that the Danish Council of Associations of Disabled People (DSI) were seeking a World Café host in South Africa to facilitate this meeting of African women with disabilities. They had been referred to her by Finn Voldtofte in Denmark (who was involved in discovering the World Café in 1995) and she asked if I could help. I didn't think twice about it. Soon I was corresponding with Lena Nielsen in Denmark and Kirsten Nielsen in Uganda from DSI, the two Danish partners involved in the project, as well as their South African counterpart, DPSA (Disabled People of South Africa) to design the program.
As I learned more about the gathering, I stopped to reflect on how the World Café and other processes I am used to applying would suit this group. The group would be composed entirely of women with disabilities. Hmmm.... A good number were blind and visually impaired, and an equally high number physically disabled, dependent on crutches or wheel chairs. Two would be deaf. I'd never in my life worked with such a group before. I emailed Lena and asked if she was sure they wanted to use the World Café, as it is a process that is very visual-the room setup communicates the process, the table decorations create the atmosphere-and requires a lot of moving around. I had images in my head of how I usually hang things all around the room when I facilitate as the meeting progresses to visualize the group's journey as it unfolds. Would all this be possible with this group?
Lena assured me that we should go ahead. Even though she hadn't experienced the World Café herself, they knew they wanted to use such processes which 'put the participants' ideas in the center' and this was what she had heard was powerful about the World Café.
Still, I knew this group would be different, and that I'd have to learn quickly about their needs. I emailed an old Brazilian college friend of mine, Fernando Botelho, who is blind and works with people with disabilities, to ask his advice. He quickly wrote a long excited and encouraging email back, in which, among other advice, he made the following suggestions:
- "Women who are deaf or hard of hearing will have extra obstacles in social events/situations/needs, those who are blind will have their greatest challenge in accessing information in general and with mobility.
- Make sure you bring blind women into the discussion by encouraging their participation. One way to do this is to remember their name and call on them for their opinion.
- It will also be helpful to start the meeting with everyone introducing themselves, that way those who are blind will have some idea of who is where.
- Make sure you look at them when you talk to them even though most will probably not make eye-contact.
- It would be great to have at least the most important pieces of information in Braille. If they know Braille, this will empower them and make them feel included."
While still a bit nervous, I started getting excited about this challenge of a more conscious form of human interaction. In conversation with Lena and Kirsten, I started designing the event.
Sure enough, as the workshop unfolded in the end of November, it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
The first thing we did was to share with the women that this gathering would be the first experience of the 'network' of women with disabilities, and that we would try as much as possible to practice network organizing in the meeting. The participants prepared a number of presentations to be shared and these would serve as conversation starters for more intense conversations in small groups.
In their introductions, each woman introduced a question that matters, so that it was clear what was at the center of the meeting. Among them were:
- What are the root causes of women with disabilities' marginalization in the fight vs. HIV/AIDS? What are the strategies to address them?
- What strategies can we employ for empowering women and children with disabilities to advocate for their reproductive rights, and access to information and sharing?
- How do we educate/disseminate information to women with intellectual disabilities, who are particularly susceptible to AIDS?
- How could women with disabilities share knowledge and experience among each other on the African continent?
We agreed on nine process principles for the week:
~ Recognize each person as the starting point
~ Create hospitable and safe space for dialogue and commitment
~ Explore questions that matter
~ Respect and explore diversity of perspectives and experiences
~ Foster creativity
~ Unleash what we already know to be true
~ Listen together for patterns, insights, and deeper questions
~ Spread insights from individual to small group to large-scale impact
~ Make collective knowledge visible and understandable to the group.
They agreed that this was what was needed. They were not interested in creating a new formal organization or international institution. They wanted to create something light, that could work through their existing organizations and that would get its energy from strong personal relationships between them, from clarity of purpose, and from their creative ideas.
We worked with Café format every afternoon around the topic of the day. The Café questions were related to the challenges and opportunities of African culture and context for women with disabilities, the strengths and weaknesses of the disabilities movements in their countries, identifying similar trends and questions, and coming up with their vision for their network. One day had been devoted to country reports, and instead of listening to 15 presentations in a row in plenary, we presented them at small Café tables and drew out patterns.
The women embraced the process. They complemented each other, helping compensate for each other's disabilities. We took a little longer to move between the tables. One woman of higher status at first refused to move between tables, but the other women defended the Café format with humor and determination and so we continued.
Whenever someone would enter the room, I would acknowledge their presence and have them say a few words, so the women could all know who was there and could hear where the newcomer was located in the room. I looked them in the eye. I learned their names from day one. When I wrote something or drew something on the wall, I would describe what was visually there. I would describe the room set-up every time it changed, and would let everyone know if they should expect to come back to a room that was differently arranged.
I also noticed the disabilities gave us all a reason to touch continually, which I think helped to build relationships. I was constantly touching the blind to let them know I was there, touching the physically disabled to aid their mobility.
For me, it became an experience in being completely present as a facilitator, attentive to detail and acknowledging of people, and an experience of truly working on a learning edge. I was practicing something I'd never tried before, and there was a constant spoken and unspoken feedback going on between me and them.
For a week I worked with a group that would notice if just one person was falling behind because of a difference in ability. Because they were respectful of the need to slow down, we achieved an incredibly high quality of cooperation and co-creation.
On the fourth day we all wore blindfolds for a visioning exercise. The blind women laughed at the idea that the others would partake in their disability, and the others experienced how taking away the faculty of sight is both a challenge, but also can be an aid to the imagination. I had adapted Joanna Macy's "Double Circles" exercise, in which half the group imagines they are future beings living in the year 2100, talking to their ancestors, about the struggles they went through in harder times (in 2001), and the steps they took to create a 'Great Turning' in the world.
I had written down many of the problems the women had described in numerous disturbing stories in the first few days, and turned this into what would be a story of a faraway and far darker 'past' in 100 years time. The 'future women' asked their 'ancestors' if this was truly the reality they had lived as women with disabilities, how they had felt through that, and what had given them courage to make a change.
After this exercise they were ready to move from three days of sharing their struggles and learning about the alarming reality of reproductive health among African women with disabilities, into visioning the future and their network. They knew that the strong bonds between them would be the key to their success.
I think the Café process had helped to build these strong bonds in the group as a whole. The women had experienced sitting in a variety of small groups, and so they felt a coherence of the overall network.
We moved into two days of designing the identity of the new network, its purpose and principles, its roles and relationships, and its communication flows - still using World Café for parts of the process. As intended, I think the Café helped to create the experience of what a network is, and as we had been working with an alternative process throughout the week, it was easier for them to also envision a different kind of organization.
We closed off on Friday the 30th of November with a round of personal commitments. Rauha from Namibia said, "As soon as I arrive home, it will take me only one second to continue. I know where the obstacles are, I know the way to follow, for my organization and for women with disabilities in Namibia. I'm going to make them - because we are not alone - put more fire on, to have a candle held up for all women and children with disabilities."
Two years later, after having shared this story with Juanita Brown and David Isaacs recently, I went back to my journal from that Friday. It began:
Women with Disabilities
At first I thought it was semantics that a few of them emphasized the use of "women with disabilities" over "disabled women." Now that is exactly the difference between how I might have seen them before and how I see them now. There were more whole people here than I can remember having been with in a long time. Maybe ever. Their completeness completes me. Am I romanticizing it I don't think so-it is an intuitive thing, a feeling. They have not had part of them disabled and thus become lesser beings. On the contrary, they are whole with their disabilities. Their spirit is huge.
How I'm fired up about their cause today. About helping others understand that difference.
And how gratifying it is to have spent five days with real people. Sincere women. Not pretending to be something else. They are sisters of the people they are working for. How rare is this at an international development conference. The feeling is so different from the recent conference I facilitated in October, where I felt the people I was working with had become, were living, a system. The more they spoke about poverty the further away the poor seemed.
Here, the more stories were shared of women with disabilities, the more of them there seemed to be, with us there in the room."
Even though I haven't seen these women in the last two years, they are also still here with me, and from email contact, I know the network continues. Meanwhile I continue to adapt and apply the World Café and trust that it is useful for a vast diversity of needs and contexts. I look forward to being able to do such an exercise again, and thinking more consciously about what the typical Café props are, such as the talking piece, the table cloth, etc. what purpose they serve, and what alternative tools can be used with a group with disabilities or that otherwise has a different set of needs.
My main lessons of this experience as a Café host were at the level of how to 'be', as opposed to specific tools. It was about being attentive, and physically and practically being a connector. The Café process itself creates a web among the participants that generates collective wisdom. But beyond that, the host can also physically and practically play a role of connecting people at many levels as the meeting unfolds. In some ways, the practices I learned at this meeting are not directly needed with a typical group of participants who don't have disabilities. In other ways they apply just as much it's just about having the courage and attention to practice them.
Marianne Bojer (Mille)
*****
Mille is one of the founders of Pioneers of Change, an international learning community of young changemakers, established in 1999. Working with Pioneers of Change as a member of the "Cultivation Unit" for the past five years, she has developed extensive experience in facilitating learning communities and organization-building. Much of her work has involved outreach in many countries around the world, including facilitating international gatherings in Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt, Slovenia, Denmark, the United States, etc. She has also worked on a project-basis, among other groups, with the World Summit for Sustainable Development Civil Society Secretariat, World Vision International, The Danish Association of Disabled Persons (and African Network of Women with Disabilities), The GreenHouse Project (South Africa), Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Ashoka, the State of the World Forum, and the South African Department of Education.
Born in Denmark in 1971, Mille has spent more than half her life abroad in the Czech Republic, Egypt, the United States, Burkina Faso, The Netherlands, Brazil, and South Africa, where she now lives. As a result, she is committed to engaging diversity as a source of creative solutions for social change, and to applying and adapting pattern-changing ideas across cultural contexts.
Pioneers of Change is an emerging, self-organizing, global learning community of committed, young people, in their mid-20's to early 30's from diverse cultural, social, and professional backgrounds. The network numbers over 1000 individual pioneers in over 70 countries, who organize in learning teams, project groups, and local networks as part of the flexible structure of the organization. A series of learning programs form the core of our activities.