A second step in community mobilization is for citizens to participate in a one-day Citizenship and Social Harmony workshop. This workshop connects people more deeply to the founding principles of Bangladesh — participatory democracy and social inclusion — as distinct from the prevailing experience of patronage-based governance.
Social Harmony and Citizenship Workshop
Purpose of the activity
- To increase the awareness of the participants regarding social coherence and sense of citizenship
Facilitation: what type of person or team is required to facilitate the activity?
- Community facilitators
- VTR (Volunteer Trainers)
- Union Coordinators
**1-2 facilitators should be enough to facilitate this workshop.
Preparation – what should be done before the activity?
- Selection of the participants from a village
- Fixing a date, time and place
- Inviting the participants to join the workshop
Participants – who should participate? How many in each session?
- Villagers from different age groups, occupation, gender, education, religion and class
**Around 20 participants should be present in each workshop.
Duration – how long does it take?
- It is a 1.5 to 2.0 hours long workshop.
Financial cost items
- Snacks
- Flipcharts
- Occasional local transportation allowance for the facilitators
What are the “transformative” aspects of this activity? It shifts the mindset of participants from what to what?
- The transformative aspects of this activity is that, it develops a sense of citizenship and social coherence among the participants.
Upon participation in this meeting, the participants
- Become more coherent (their social bonding strengthens)
- Develop a sense of citizenship (transformation from feudal mentality to ownership mentality)
What are the content/factual learning objectives of the activity?
- To know about the social diversification and its positive aspects
- To learn about the demerits of conflict and violence
- To have an understanding regarding the state, constitution, citizenship, basic citizen rights, responsibilities and duties of the citizens
Flow: from “welcome” to “thank you” what are the spaces the participants are taken through? If there are “power questions” that prompt each step, what are they?
- Welcome speech
- Rules and regulations
- Self Identity and social diversification
- Social diversity and merits of recognizing it
- When does social diversity yield social conflicts?
- Demerits of conflict and violence
- Ways to enhance social harmony
- Discussion on state and citizenship
- Basic and political rights
- Constitution, rights, basic human needs
- Present practical scenario regarding the basic rights/demands
- Why this miserable scenario?
- Who is an active citizen?
- Advantage of a citizen being active
Follow-up: what should happen after the activity and how will we record it?
- Oversee the improvement of the situation of the village in terms of social harmony and incidents of conflict & violence
- Observe the roles played by the participants as citizens, after participating in the workshop
- Track the activities of the participants through focus group discussions and interviews
**To keep record, THP staff will collect the data regarding the conflict and violence incidents and preserve them. They will also collect and record the observational data regarding the behavioral changes of the participants after they participate in the workshops.