What are participants really getting from taking part in your activities?

In most of the studies, people mentioned that they felt the opportunity to participate in a project as a chance to really think of how they do things right now. This includes the approaches they have in tackling challenges (eg. one addressed by the project itself), but as well a broader reflection on themselves as an organisation or community. Participants stated that during the activities, especially in a group, they noticed more clearly dynamics, behaviours and tendencies they and other people have when it comes to approaching a challenge. These insights helped them evaluate themselves and the ‘context’, figuring out possible ways for change or improvement. 

When it comes to collaboratively and actively work on something, people are more likely to show up their skills, knowledge and attitudes. In a word, their own capabilities. In this process what was seen is that many participants actually became more aware of own capabilities that were either latent to them, or new to the project context. Freedom of experimentation and agency was many times felt as an important aspect by people interviewed. This gave them the chance to act more spontaneously and this let emerge what they were capable of. A ‘safe space’ can also give a chance to stop for a second and think. This may happen inside as well as outside the activities themselves and is important as it gives people a chance to reflect on what they are doing, and from there build self-awareness on own capabilities. This awareness is important as it might lead, as I’ll show next, to a whole reconsideration of someone’s agency and role within a context and community setting an important first step towards real empowerment. 

In all the cases participants discovered as well new useful competencies. Some of them could even make their own. Methods, tools employed as well as skills and attitudes triggered by the activities (eg. active listening, communication skills etc.) were picked up by some participants that recognised their usefulness for further use. Participatory activities can make these things tangible for people and trigger mutual learning processes. Principles behind methods and tools become more tangible and easy to comprehend, their usefulness is directly experienced and the collective setting can push everyone to try things out. Triggering participants to reflect on these aspects could help them realise and articulate better what they found useful, and why or how they feel they could apply it again.

This happened for example in my previous project in Palermo, as two members of the organisations said they were positively impressed by the effect that visualisation and facilitation skills had on themselves and the group, and found their way to develop those skills for further use in their work.

A fourth common benefit that was reported by participants was the consolidation or sometimes the generation of new relationships with people. Participatory activities showed indeed to be a promising space for creating new connections, networks of people that many times are strengthened by common interests emerging indeed in the projects. On the other hand, activities made sometimes emerge people’s real interests, attitudes and maybe even latent capabilities. This has the potential of further consolidating existing networks, as it happened in the relatively young organisation in Palermo, giving more awareness of each other’s motivations and ‘missions’ regarding interests that might go way beyond the goals of the project itself, but that can be more capable of aligning people on the long term.

Wrapping up, positive experiences in participatory activities led people to reflect and consider multiple aspects. From their current capabilities and ‘ways of doing’, to new competencies they could acquire, or new or stronger connections with like-minded people. 

All these factors contributed significantly in making many participants more confident of themselves, more aware of their role in bringing positive change and ultimately more capable of achieving the things they wanted. After the projects ended, people took concrete action in different ways. Some changed their career path towards developing skills and knowledge that were outside their previous expertise. Others became role models for others and ambassadors in their respective contexts. Some gained leverage in their workplace thanks to capabilities and knowledge emerged during the projects. Concluding, many were capable of ‘framing’ the role and actions that they desired to take in their respective contexts after figuring out that they were more capable of impacting it than they thought before. Even though these things happened outside the project itself, they somehow derived also from it.