Coordinators and rapporteurs:

Tuesday, Wednesday, 9, 10 October

The two workshops concerning this topics differed from each other, but both explored the issue (mainly by "questioning" techniques) - since the inclusion of "why?" in the topic title implies a challenging of assumptions. Various formal and informal types of questions were used.

For example, one group split into sub-groups. Each sub-group generated a list of questions relevant to the issue. Then these lists of questions were exchanged, so that each sub-group could try to answer the questions set by the other sub-group.

Answer approach was to generate questions prompted by the interregator words (Why? Who? What? Where? When? How?). Another useful checklist for drawing attention to different aspects of the issue (or different aspects of any proposed action plans) which we discussed was the well-known:

FACTORS:

Social/sociological

Technological

Economic

Political

Extended to

FACTORS:

Environmental

Legal/ legislative

Values

Since the topic asks how coalitions can be built - and this implies team-work and co-ordination between people - the group tried a couple of simple (but difficult) logical/physical puzzles. Reviewing this (flipchart sheets show notes of this) led to many valuable insights concerning matters such as:

• how we respond when faced with an intractable problem
• the importance of clear communication
• helping people who have to work together to feel comfortable with each other, etc.

FLIPCHART PRESENTATION OF THE WORKSHOP

Mental challenge (mental warm-up exercise)

• understand the problem and its constraints
• do not cheat!
• even if someone has told you the answer, can you realize it in action?
• try things out
  • physical actions
  • mental thoughts
• encourage people in teams to get close to each other
• be patient (even though you are frustrated)
• do not give up
• communicate with each other
• do not complicate the issue unnecessarily
• play, use all parts of brain, all modalities
• relax
• sometimes, by our attempts to improve things, we make things worse!
• determine what is relevant or not relevant to the problem

This was in relation to a simple, but difficult, logical/physical challenge, which we then compared to the challenge of building coalitions against corruption.

Some key issues in building coalitions

Causes

We asked:
What causes people to build coalitions?
What can be the consequences of building coalitions?

Feeling lonely

---

Need for more resources of power, etc. Not enough ideas

Building coalitions Anti corruption

Psychological support - Stronger together - More ideas - More stability

More understanding - Better listening - Participation:
all this builds commitment

Raising awareness - Building capacity!! - More publicity, visibility - Increasing resources (money, influence, technology)

More access to resources: corruption vanishes

Consequences

What?
Who?
When?

Where?
Why?
How?

How am I (what sort of personality) to build coalitions?

What sort of people do we need?

Here are some useful questions we asked about building coalitions. These questions (and more) help us work out how to build coalitions of different types.

What do we need to build coalitions?

Where do you build coalitions in corrupt countries?

How do we build coalitions?

Why to build coalitions?

How do you go about it?

Who builds coalitions now?

Who to build coalitions?

Who can we join with?

When do we build coalitions

• how long will it take?
• when shall we start?

How fast to build coalitions?

What do we want? For what is this coalition?

Who supports the coalition?

Who will try to stop us?

What will be the problems?

Shared main aim (even if subsidiary aims differ)

Express ideas (allow it)

Sometimes compromise (know when to hold firm, when to compromise)

Communication

• discussion etc.
• training in communication skills
• raising awareness
• procedural mechanisms
  
  

Democracy

• voting etc.

It's important to define corruption - but difficult