As a facilitator you will most likely find that you will not be able to use all these exercises in the course of three days. You may have to either add another day (and that may be too expensive) or you will have to cut out some of the exercises. You may also know other exercises which you feel would be more appropriate in your community. Please feel free to add or take away and make it your own. And please remember to add your own evaluation and your own exercises so that this manual will grow and be more useful.

Here is a small collection of other exercises that you may want to use:  

From the Bank of Ideas: (will be added)

• Theatre for Development
• Human Library
• Clean up campaign
• Helping school kids with their home work
• Round Table
• Demonstration / March
• Hearing

A list of ice breakers/energisers:

The knot
Concert (give each group a sound)
How many things can this be used for? (a plastic cup, a piece of paper…)
Four corners
The line
The sun shines on…
Find the leader
Do as I do, I do, I do
The field is on fire!
Puzzle
Make a network without chairs
Create a human statue around a theme (peace/cooperation/development….)

Extra ideas

The puzzle

The aim is to encourage participants to think independently. It is also an exercise about  cooperation.

Divide the participants into groups of 6 or 7.

If you have three groups, cut up three pieces of ordinary paper (if you use coloured paper, make sure you use the same colour for all the puzzles)

Cut each paper into four or five pieces. Try to use interesting shapes.

All the puzzles must be different. Mix the pieces and put three, four or five pieces into three envelopes. (if you have five groups, you have of course five envelopes and five puzzles)

Give each group one envelope. Tell them to solve the puzzle, without talking to each other.

Don’t tell them anything else. Give the groups max 15 minutes to solve the puzzle. They will of course soon discover that it is impossible, but it takes a while before they realise that the other groups might have the pieces they need. Some will start stealing from other groups, others might start helping each other, giving away their own pieces etc.

When the puzzles are finished, discuss what happened with them. Tell them that the only rule they had was not talking, they were free to use their creativity to solve the problem.

“Please help”

An exercise in being less obedient: (for groups where this might be a characteristic trait)

The aim is to encourage participants to think before they follow orders.

Divide the participants into three groups. Give each group a sheet of paper telling them to do certain things, for instance:

            Group A: Please help us move all the chairs to the wall against the window

            Group B: Please help us move all the chairs to the middle of the room

            Group C: Please help us move all the chairs out of the room

This will of course create chaos.

The idea behind this exercise is to make sure the participants do not just obey instructions without thinking. It is also an exercise to start introducing conflict management. The activity always creates a lot of confusion and potential conflict. It gives you as facilitator the opportunity to bring up issues like “thinking independently, following instructions, solving conflicts etc.)

NB: Always spend time to explain the reason why you did a certain exercise and discuss it in the group