The ‘big picture’ aim of GAMEChange Network is a community-led change movement promoting social justice, inclusive and participatory democratic structures and environmental sustainability. The family of empowerment methodologies aim to:
- empower women and men of all ages and from all backgrounds with visual communication skills for visioning, analysis and planning to have more control over their lives
- develop inclusive leadership skills and participatory networks for implementation
to support democratic and dynamic movements for social justice, democracy and environmental sustainability. - mainstream empowerment tools and participatory skills across other development activities and interventions to improve inclusion, effectiveness and cost-efficiency of these interventions.
The resources below give an overview of the main distinctive features. But they are no substitute for learning from community experts. The best way to understand the ‘flavour’ of these adapted empowerment methodologies is through direct experience and visiting champions in an organisation that is already using the methodologies.
Dissemination of the methodology is through inspiring hundreds and thousands of ‘community champions’ to share the tools and methodology within their social networks. Through sharing experiences and collective aggregation and analysis of information community ‘champions’ further improve their own success, develop collective actions and increase their voice in policy advocacy.
But each GAMEChange process is unique. The community-led participatory process adapts the generic methodology over time to different:
- development purposes
- contexts
- needs and capacities of different stakeholders.
These adaptations often use new names to reflect the particular purpose of the process and/or local language terminology.
THINKING WITH DIAGRAMS
Visual communication
Visual communication has become a very important skill for everyone from villages to boardrooms in the modern world.
- more information on a page: pictures and diagrams can clarify complex concepts, identify interrelationships between issues and clearly prioritise ways forward.
- everyone can participate equally: People who cannot read and write can communicate directly with powerful stakeholders. Different language speakers can understand a lot without translation.
- improves learning: People remember more information when it is visual than when it is written.
Pictorial diagram templates
GAMEChange methodologies adapt four pictorial diagram templates for different issues, contexts and processes. These diagrams:
- inspire participants to vision possibilities for change
- ask and analyse certain questions based on participants’ own experience
- prioritise both immediate and longer term actions for change
- track progress on actions over time and share lessons with others
facilitation for change
Empowerment Action Principles and non-negotiables
All GAMEChange processes follow a number of common principles and non-negotiables:
- Inspiration is key
- Inclusion and respect for all
- Self-reliance
- Everyone can be a leader of change
- Action from day 1
- Reflective learning
- Community-led and multi-stakeholder
- Social justice principles of gender and diversity rights are mainstreamed and non-negotiable
Inspiration to Change: Facilitation Strategies
GAMEChange empowerment action methodologies aim to inspire a sustainable and dynamic change movement.
GAMEChange facilitation does not aim to ‘teach tools’ or ‘political correctness’ but to:
- inspire participants with the confidence and skills to vision, analyse and plan independently for themselves
- create safe, inclusive and equitable spaces for different voices to be heard and listened to
- develop the leadership and deep listening skills of all participants
‘Successful’ facilitation inspire participants to continue working if the facilitator leaves the room and/or focuses on photographing or video for support documentation.
Then participant ‘champions’ can continue to inspire change in other people when they get home. The main sharing and capacity-building takes place within participants’ social networks, within households, communities and local groups.
Fun with a Serious Purpose: Facilitation techniques
Participants need to have fun and gain confidence to innovate and change. This means promoting participant learning through many different channels:
Underlying each of these methods are:
- empowering and fun ‘disruption of comfort zones’
- experiential leadership and deep listening
- ‘facipulation from the back’
action learning system
The Participatory Action Learning System links all stakeholders. It enables informed collaboration from communities to policy makers to improve progress towards change.
Participatory Action Learning
Participants at each level use diagram tools and empowering facilitation strategies to:
- reflect on past experience
- identify and benefit from opportunities and foresee and address challenges
- revisit visions and improve progress
Empowering Enquiry
External research following principles of ’empowering enquiry’ builds on, complements and validates the participatory research to provide accessible and transparent documentation for advocacy.
This external and more extractive research however, builds on the information from participant diagrams, and reinforces the capacity of participants to analyse their situation and ways forward – those interviewed should always benefit and learn more from the time they give to researchers. They should also be informed of the findings so that the research contributes to their process.
Use of visual methods like photography and video are particularly important as a cost-effective means of recording participants stories as well as communicating findings.
