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Connecting Experience
Goal 10 – Reduced Inequality
Everyone deserves to have the same opportunities to live a happy, healthy, and successful life, yet inequalities are rising between social classes, rural and urban populations, and people of different genders, ethnicities, and abilities. It’s our responsibility to make sure everyone around us is treated with respect and is able to live a fulfilled life.
Tasks
Walking through differences
Wake up points
| Age Group: 7+ | Amount of people: 10+ |
Time: 45 minutes
Objective:
To become familiar with the terms stereotypes and prejudices; to be aware of the impact of these terms and to know how to avoid prejudic.
Material:
open space, a blank poster or a white board, some pencils
Instructions:
To start the activity, ask the group if they know the definition of each term that will be used during the game. Create a definition with their ideas for the words prejudices and stereotypes. Use keywords and concrete examples. These definitions will be visible to everyone throughout the game. Take the time necessary for everyone to understand.
Prejudice
Having an opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience, ex. Disliking a group of people because of the colour of their skin or their religion, it’s usually negative.
Stereotype
An idea many people have based off what they see from the outside, rather than what they know of the people. Can be positive or negative.
A stereotype is a thought about a group of people, created from simple ideas you have about them (e.g. French people only eat snails, people from the USA are fat) whereas prejudice is a feeling towards a group of people, based on no facts, e.g. Racism, ageism, sexism. Prejudice can often lead to discrimination against that group.
Once everyone understands the terms, begin the activity.
One side of the room is Prejudice and the other is Stereotype.
The master of the game reads a sentence that is either a stereotype or a prejudice, the participants must then go and place themselves in the right area.
Have participants explain why they chose that area.
After a few sentences, the game master asks two or three participants to mime stereotypes or prejudices and the other players have to get into the right area.
Leaders can create the sentences and the mimes based off common prejudices and stereotypes in their country.
Debrief:
- Give them some known stereotypes about their country, and ask them what they think about it? Do they agree or disagree with the stereotype?
- The leader can then explain how prejudice leads to discrimination (acts against a group based on prejudice, for example racism or sexism).
- Ask them what can be done to avoid this, here are some ideas for reflection: talking with people from other cultures, not judging without knowing, respecting others without conditions.
Prejudice Pictonary
Wake up points
| Age Group: 11+ | Amount of people: 10+ |
Time: 1h – 2h hours
Objective:
To become aware of the prejudice we all have, to understand where they come from and explore how we can deconstruct them.
Material:
Paper, pens, words, something to put the paper on the wall, obstacle course
Instructions:
Pictionary /obstacle course
Divide the group into teams and give each team some paper and a pen. Teams should be far enough away that they can’t hear each other.
Each team member will have 2 minutes to complete their drawing.
They start by going through the obstacle course to the game master. The game master will give both teams the same word.
Once they have their word they must run back to their team and begin to draw. The first team to guess the word correctly gets 3 points, if any other team guesses before time runs out, they get 1 point.
When the time is up, each team writes the word on the picture and the game master puts it on the wall.
Note: While drawing, the person cannot answer any questions. They cannot use numbers, letters or gestures. If it’s a nationality the drawer can’t use the flag or the symbol of the money.
Debrief:
When all the words have been done, everyone gathers together and observes each picture classified by word.
What do they observe? Does everyone have the same representation of the word? Are they positive or negative? What do we call those representations? What are the consequences of them?
For the debate, use open questions and ask the person to justify and give everyday examples when possible, to make them realise that you have stereotypes about a lot of things.
Spot your differences
Look around points
| Age Group: 7+ | Amount of people: 10+ |
Time: 20 minutes
Objective:
To see what things they have in common and what differences they have.
Material:
Chairs arranged in a circle
Instructions:
Arrange the chair in a circle and have all the participants sit down.
Each member takes it in turn to say one thing they think applies only to them (e.g. I live in the countryside, I’ve visited two countries, I play football).
If that statement applies to another person in the group, they come and sit on that person’s lap. If someone is sitting on their lap they cannot move even if a statement applies to them.
Continue around the circle with the person sitting on top getting to say a statement.
The winner is the person with no one sitting on their lap at the end.
Debrief
- Were you surprised by what you had in common?
- Were you surprised by the differences in the group?
- Do you think if you played with a group from another organisation or country there would be more differences? What do you think they might be?
- Do you think it’s good to have a difference in the group? Why?
- Have you ever seen anyone being treated badly because of something which makes them different? Do you think there’s something you could do to stop this?
The Unfair Game
Look around
| Age Group: 11+ | Amount of people: 10+ |
Time: 45 minutes
Objective:
Realising that there is inequality and the feelings associated with it.
Material:
a lot of toy bricks, tokens to exchange against bricks
Instructions:
Set up
There are four teams, each with different starting materials and circumstances.
- Team 1: flat floor, 40 bricks, 20 tokens
- Team 2: flat floor, 40 bricks, 20 tokens, each member of the team has 1 hand tied behind their back
- Team 3: not flat floor, 25 bricks, 10 tokens. Every 6-7 minutes, the game master comes and breaks the tower because of strong winds or flooding
- Team 4: not flat floor, 20 bricks, 10 tokens. The game master tells them several times that they need to move the tower a few cm because of local law
You can adapt the rules to work for your meeting place.
Shop: everyone can buy bricks, the price is 1 token for 1 brick.
- Team 1 every two bricks bought they get one for free
- Team 2 get one for one
- Team 3 has to pay 2 tokens to have a brick
- Team 4 has to ask twice and pay 2 or 3 tokens to get 1 brick
Play
The only instruction given to the teams is to make the biggest tower and that they can come and buy more bricks if they want. They have 20 minutes to do it.
Debrief
- Did you notice something during the game?
- What does it feel to be on the team that had more difficult rules? And for the one who doesn’t?
- Did the one on the lucky team try to help the others? Why?
- What can we do to change inequality?
Create to educate
ACT points
| Age Group: 7+ | Amount of people: 3+ |
Time: 1 – 2 weeks
Objective:
To identify inequality in your community, and create something to teach others about it.
Material:
Paper, markers, Paint etc (depending on what you plan to create)
Instructions:
Start by identifying an inequality within your community, this could be related to disability access, economic gap, race, gender or anything else.
Discuss different ways to tackle this inequality, what can you encourage people to do?
Based on your discussion create a piece of art. You could do one big piece, several smaller pieces together in a showcase, individual pieces etc.
These pieces should help raise awareness of the inequality the group identified and promote ways to tackle it. If there are already organisations tackling these problems in your area you could collaborate with them.
Inequality Project
ACT points
| Age Group: 11+ | Amount of people: 3+ |
Time: 1 – 2 weeks
Objective:
To get involved with a group facing inequality in your area and do a project to assist them.
Material:
Paper/whiteboards and pencils/markers
Instructions:
Start by identifying a group in your area that faces inequality. Research to discover if there are any initiatives or projects set up to assist them. If a project exists you can get in contact with them to collaborate, or if not, you can create your own project!
Example: Solidarity dinners or food sharing events with people in refugee centres, taking part in a pride event, connecting with the elderly or helping out at a support centre for people with disabilities or illness.
