Diamond visions are shining and very valuable. They inspire us to dream of a bright and prosperous future. Every Vision Diamond is also unique and with many faces, all of which reflect light and combine to form the whole.
But mining the rough diamonds from the depths of the earth is very hard work and takes skill and determination to succeed. It takes even more hard work, skill and determination to make them shine.
We need to keep the inspiring vision before us, even when life is tough. Once Diamond Visions shine, they last forever and are very hard to break.
GAMEChange Diamond Visions are participatory frameworks to examine sensitive, complex and potentially conflictual issues.
Use Diamond Visions for:
- Visioning and identifying change indicators: Diamond Visions establish locally relevant SMART indicators (eg gender justice and CEDAW diamonds, poverty diamonds, leadership diamonds)
- Family, group and multi-stakeholder negotiation: Diamond Visions clarify and analyse the extent and patterns of consensus or difference within families, communities and/or groups in visions and indicators
- Establish locally-relevant priorities for change and set targets Diamond Visions facilitate participatory negotiation of mutually beneficial ‘win-win’ change contracts (win-win diamonds, leader/member group norms)
- Rapid participatory impact assessment Diamond Visions offer a more inspiring, rigorous and empowering methodology for Focus Group Discussions
diamond visions:
Generic Steps
STEP 1: Individual reflection
Participants identify what criteria they think characterise extreme opposites of an issue or spectrum eg poverty, empowerment, violence. They draw these extremes on a set number of colour-coded cards.
STEP 2: Sharing
Participants form groups of people as relevant to the issue and share their cards. A charade game is useful to improve visual communication: one person comes up and shows the card. The other participants have to guess what it means. Then those with the same issue/criteria hand their cards to the person at the front. That person sits down and the next person comes up until all cards are finished.
STEP 3: Voting
When participants have heard everyone else’s ideas, they get a certain number of votes. They come up and confidentially put a mark on the cards they want to vote on. Or they can vote by show of hands. The difference between the number of cards and the number of votes for any issue can be a rough indicator of changes in attitude/awareness as a result of the exercise.
4: Ranking
Participants then count the votes and place each set of cards on the relevant level of the diamond: best likes at the top, medium likes towards the middle, medium dislikes middle below the line, worst dislikes at the bottom.
5: Action priorities
Ring Action priorities in green as planned fruits. These are most likely to be the things that people really want, but that few people have. Or the things that people want least and many people have.
6: Plenary sharing and negotiation
Participants from each group presents their group Diamond – those who are normally least vocal should present first with others adding. One person removes the cards from their own drawing and, with discussion with the rest of the participants, places these cards either on their side or in the middle of the ‘parent diamond’. This identifies common indicators and potential lines of difference to establish common Codes of Conduct. This should include discussion of how participants can improve the situation of the most disadvantaged people at the bottom of the Diamond.
Tracking and Impact Assessment
Ring achievement of action priorities as red fruits. It is also possible to show impacts retrospectively for individual indicators as mini-wiggly-road journeys.
vision Diamond:
diagram template dna
What Are Diamond Visions?
Diamond Visions are participatory frameworks that use a Diamond shape with horizonal and vertical divisions to examine sensitive, complex and potentially conflictual issues. Vision Diamonds:
- identify elements of a vision – what is good and what is bad
- rank these elements as hierarchy of priorities
- facilitate consensus between on common values stakeholders
- clarify dimensions of difference for stakeholders to negotiate
- provide indicators with baseline to quantify achievements and things still to achieve
- provide the basis for multi-stakeholder negotiation on next ways forward.
However Diamonds are the most complex of the GAMEChange tools to facilitate. They take time, particularly if dealing with sensitive issues. If time is very short and/or strong participatory facilitation skills do not exist, then use alternative visioning and assessment methods like simple Vision Drawing or Soulmate Visioning.
Diamond VisionTool Examples
- Poverty Diamonds: establish women and men’s indicators for poverty targeting.
- Empowerment Diamonds: establishes criteria of most empowered and least empowered for different stakeholders.
- Gender Justice and CEDAW Diamonds to identify detailed indicators for gender justice and reach consensus between women and men as part of a GALS Participatory Gender Review.
- Happy Family Diamonds: establishes criteria for women, men and youth in Happy and Unhappy Families as more ‘men-friendly’ alternative to Gender Diamonds)
- Violence Diamonds: establishes a hierarchy of different types of psychological and physical abuse suffered by women, children and men to establish non-violent modes of conduct. Used in ANANDI, India.
- Food Security Diamonds: look at the types of food women and men have in the most food secure and insecure households in relation to the foods they most value.
- Leadership Diamonds: looks at criteria for good leaders and good members to establish agreed common codes.
- Decent Work Diamonds: looks at employee and employer criteria for Decent Work and establishing an agreed Code of Conduct.
- Friendship Diamonds: a personal Diamond Tool used between two people to improve their relationship through bringing together what each person likes/dislikes about themselves and what they like/dislike about the other person.
Diamond Framework on Flipchart
Diamond shape 1 for group: four horizontal ranking lines
Diamond shape 2 for stakeholder plenary: horizontal ranking lines and three vertical stakeholder lines
positive and negative indicators
Individual brainstorm of indicators drawn on colour-coded small cards, then shared groups as drawing energiser.
Group ranking and prioritisation
Indicators grouped, ranked and placed in the appropriate part of the diamond and voted on.
Action priorities are ringed.
Tracking over time.
Plenary Consensus Diamond
Cards are taken from the group diamond and placed on the plenary diamond: placing them to one side only if they are relevant for only one stakeholder or in the middle if they are common indicators.
Traking over time.
Facilitation Process
Individuals or families can use Diamonds eg Friendship Diamonds.
For group activities they are an important participatory tool that incorporates drawing games and development of participant group facilitation skills. With experienced facilitation they are a good tool to use with very large numbers of people. Where Diamonds are a collective activity, it is very important that participants control the process.
The facilitator’s role is mainly to ensure the discussion is fully participatory and inclusive. Facilitators:
- Provide the Parent Diamond Framework – or guide participants to draw these – and give instructions on the main steps for the groups as people go along.
- Ensure everyone is participating and contributing drawings and ideas and that the most dominant participants stand back and listen.
- Document the process without interfering.
- Decide the order of group presentation in the plenary – if it seems that the more powerful stakeholder groups have already given a lot of ground, then they should go first. In the case of gender diamonds men should often go first. If the process has been too conflictual, then the plenary ahould take place later after ‘discussions over dinner’.
- The facilitator/s only intervenes on the main topic at the end through posing certain questions and a very brief summing up. The facilitator reserves a succinct and carefully considered contribution for the end when everyone else has spoken.
A Nestle GALS Catalyst workshop with cocoa cooperatives in Ivory Coast used gender diamonds with 350 women and men. The majority of participants had not been to a meeting before and could not read and write. The groups quickly learned to self-facilitate with a small number of people who were doing the exercise for the first time leading and in communication with the main facilitator. All the group diamonds were quantified and fed back to the plenary. But because of the gender imbalance – many more women than men – there was no bringing together in to a ‘parent diamond’.
