Module 4: Collective Recovery
Observance Hosting Guide
Completing the following elements will help you plan and host a 400 Years of Inequality observance:
If you wish, download this worksheet to help you take notes on your progress with each element of the hosting guide, click the button below:
Completing the following elements will help you plan and host a 400 Years of Inequality observance:
- Build an observance team
- Find or choose your story
- Anchor your story in a location
- Find the best way to share your story with others
- Determine when you want to tell your story
- Build Collective Recovery into your event
If you wish, download this worksheet to help you take notes on your progress with each element of the hosting guide, click the button below:
Begin with the first two elements:
1. Build an Observance Team
Invite others to help you develop and present your observance. This may include family members, friends, work colleagues, and members of any organizations or institutions with which you’re affiliated.
To get the invitation out you might:
A team begins with two people and will almost certainly grow as your planning progresses and word begins to circulate about your observance. That is, building your team and planning your observance will happen at the same time.
2. Find or Choose Your Shared Story
You and your team will share and gather many stories during the observance planning process. As share your stories, listen for the deep connections to people and places. Pause from time to time to ask:
Your response may be a defining event in the history of your community and neighborhood or region. On the other hand, it may be the gathering and weaving together of experiences across many generations and lives.
This process of sharing and listening will help you know what stories need to be shared, why they must to be shared, how best to share them, and who to call together for the observance.
Guiding the team through one or more of the activities included in modules 1, 2, and 3 will help draw out these stories:
1. Build an Observance Team
Invite others to help you develop and present your observance. This may include family members, friends, work colleagues, and members of any organizations or institutions with which you’re affiliated.
To get the invitation out you might:
- Post an announcement on one of your social media platforms
- Host a dinner for family and friends
- Write a brief article for a newsletter
- Ask to have an item about 400 Years of Inequality placed on a meeting agenda so that you can talk about the initiative.
A team begins with two people and will almost certainly grow as your planning progresses and word begins to circulate about your observance. That is, building your team and planning your observance will happen at the same time.
2. Find or Choose Your Shared Story
You and your team will share and gather many stories during the observance planning process. As share your stories, listen for the deep connections to people and places. Pause from time to time to ask:
- What is it important to acknowledge, honor, and address in our history?
- What story or stories do we need to tell about the history of inequality?
Your response may be a defining event in the history of your community and neighborhood or region. On the other hand, it may be the gathering and weaving together of experiences across many generations and lives.
This process of sharing and listening will help you know what stories need to be shared, why they must to be shared, how best to share them, and who to call together for the observance.
Guiding the team through one or more of the activities included in modules 1, 2, and 3 will help draw out these stories:
- Listen to the meditation together
- Complete and share your “I Am From …” poems
- Find your places in the timeline of inequality
Here are two other activities you might like to try together:
The Shoulders of Giants
The connections we have to those who have inspired and formed us are extremely valuable. When we place these relationships within the history of inequality we appreciate both the trans-generational impact of inequality and how, despite this history, we built and sustained meaningful lives together.
Step 1: Gather and welcome the members of your observance team
Step 2: Ask folks to sit for a few minutes with the question, “Whose shoulders do you stand on? [if you wish, provide paper and pens so that participants can write notes in response to the question]
Step 3: Ask to then sit with the question, “How were the lives and places that come to mind affected by systems or structures of inequality?”
Step 4: Invite folks to say their names and share what came up for them.
The facilitator can help identify how stories and places are connected, thus moving from sharing to discussing the knowledge and wisdom you, as a team, hold about the history of inequality and ways to move toward a world of equity.
Holding Our History
Objects and recordings from the past can spark our curiosity, teach us about our history, and help us tell our stories. Have each member of the observance team find a “clue from the past” that is meaningful to them. These clues can take many forms: a song, family or school photos, historic maps, cherished objects, magazine or newspaper articles, photographs of a special place, or a monument or memorial.
Brings these clues to the group and share the stories they hold.
The connections we have to those who have inspired and formed us are extremely valuable. When we place these relationships within the history of inequality we appreciate both the trans-generational impact of inequality and how, despite this history, we built and sustained meaningful lives together.
Step 1: Gather and welcome the members of your observance team
Step 2: Ask folks to sit for a few minutes with the question, “Whose shoulders do you stand on? [if you wish, provide paper and pens so that participants can write notes in response to the question]
Step 3: Ask to then sit with the question, “How were the lives and places that come to mind affected by systems or structures of inequality?”
Step 4: Invite folks to say their names and share what came up for them.
The facilitator can help identify how stories and places are connected, thus moving from sharing to discussing the knowledge and wisdom you, as a team, hold about the history of inequality and ways to move toward a world of equity.
Holding Our History
Objects and recordings from the past can spark our curiosity, teach us about our history, and help us tell our stories. Have each member of the observance team find a “clue from the past” that is meaningful to them. These clues can take many forms: a song, family or school photos, historic maps, cherished objects, magazine or newspaper articles, photographs of a special place, or a monument or memorial.
Brings these clues to the group and share the stories they hold.
Before moving on to the next module, make a note about how you and the other members of your team respond to the question:
What story or stories do we need to tell about the history of inequality?
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