Goals
- Identify and express one’s values
- Explore the concept of solidarity and privilege
- Support the action related to values in everyday life
Preparation
Prepare a room so that the participants can sit and write comfortably. Play relaxing music in the background.
Steps
1. Finding Values [20 minutes]
The first part of the activity is carried out individually by the par-ticipants. Ask participants to think about their lives, their relation-ships, their daily lives and to write down all those values that move their actions and to which they want to aspire.Tell them to rank the list of values in order of importance and to ex-plain why they consider the first classified the most important value indicating two reasons. Finally, ask to write each identified value on a different sheet of paper up to a maximum of 10 values each.
2. Losing Values [20 minutes]
Explain to the participants that you will read a list of painful/dramatic/unlucky events (see Handout) and that, after each read event, the participants will have to “throw away” the value that allows them to avoid or manage the event. For example, a classmate of mine is bullied and I decide to help him using the solidarity card: in this case I throw the card with the solidarity value out of my deck of cards. Whoever runs out of values stops playing. At each round you ran-domly choose some participants (for example, participants wear-ing glasses, participants born in May, participants with a piercing and so on) and exempt them from making a choice (they will not therefore be forced, for that round, to eliminate a value). To avoid making a choice and to avoid finishing their own values, participants can ask other participants for help by having them choose instead. Each participant has two jokers to use twice in the request for help. When the time is up, gather the group for a debriefing in plenary.
Reflection
After the activity, ask the participants to arrange themselves in a circle and initiate a discussion using these questions as a starting point:
- How do you feel?
- Was it easy or difficult to take a position?
- Have you ever changed position after listening to other’s people positions? If so, why? If not, why?
- Among the issues posed by the different statements, which were the ones you considered the most important?
Were the issues raised related to personal values? If so, how? If not, why?
- Can the values of a person be determined on the basis of a single characteristic / element (for example, -nationality, gender, religion ..)?
- If you had been asked to take a position on the same statements 5 years ago, would you have responded in the same way?
- What influences your values?
- Does this activity have a connection with reality? What does this activity tell us about of everyday life?
Reference
Experiences
Before starting the activity, look at the proposed statements and adapt them to the group in relation to the age, background and context in which the participants live. You can decide to add or remove statements depending on your needs. During the debrief-ing it is important that everyone participates and gives their own opinion (you can, for example, give each participant a number, and then draw the numbers for answers). If you are a teacher and you want to propose this activity to children, make sure that the statements are understandable and accessible, in accord with everybody’s skills and knowledge.