• Everyone teaches and learns – leadership is shared.
• It involves a high level of participation.
• It stresses the creation of new knowledge rather than the passing-on of existing knowledge.
• The concrete experience of the participants is the starting point for the joint creation of knowledge.
• It’s fun!
• There is no “expert” – rather, there is mutual respect for the knowledge and experience all participants bring to the process.
• Facilitators and participants are equal members of the group. It is a relationship of dialogue, of people talking as equals.
• The facilitator learns as much from the participants as the participants learn from the facilitator.

Popular education methods include a variety of ways of drawing out people’s stories

• Invite participants to use craft materials (for example, Lego blocks, pipe cleaners, ribbon, Popsicle sticks, cotton balls, playdough) to create an image of a story.
• Choose an object from a set of household objects (for example, scissors, a ball, a clock, a water bottle, a book, a ruler, keys, eyeglasses) to represent a personal experience.
• Choose a photograph from a set of photographs to represent a feeling or an experience.
• Create a collage from magazines in keeping with a particular theme.
• Pick situations and characters from a hat and create role-plays or human sculptures to tell the story.

We can ask the group questions to bring the stories together

• Have you had an experience like this? Does this remind you of something that has happened to you?
• How is your experience similar to or different from others’ stories?
• Is this a problem that other people have?
• Why does it happen like this?
• What can we do about it?

We can also bring participants’ experiences to the surface by exploring points of view on various topics that arise

• Post different points of view on a topic on flip chart sheets around the room and ask people to go to the one that fits best with their beliefs, and then ask them to discuss their reasons for picking that perspective. The group can use visual materials to present their perspective.
• Ask people to position themselves along an imaginary line, from highly agree to highly disagree, representing points of view on a topic. They can discuss their reasons with the people standing close to them or with people at opposite ends.