Eddie Newall offers some advice on how to get delegates thinking about diversity.
There was an excellent thread on perceptions and prejudice exercises last year here.
Other possibilities:
A diversity ‘health check’ - give them a list of questions to establish their current knowledge in relation to the learning outcomes.
For example:
* Define culture, diversity, stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, racism, sexism, ageism etcetera.
* List the main UK legislation that deals with discrimination.
* What new anti-discrimination is being introduced in 2006?
* What does the European Convention on Human Rights say about discrimination?
* List the diverse individuals/communities that you deal with in the course of your work.
* List the effects on your business should any of your customers experience discrimination.
Obviously substitute questions/statements according to the learning outcomes; don’t ask about legislation if they don’t need to know about legislation. The ‘health check’ can be repeated at the end to help to assess and consolidate learning.
Another activity is instead of giving definitions of culture, diversity, stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia etc, is to give them a list of the terms and a separate list of the statements which define each term and ask them to match each term with the statement.
For example:
Racism should be matched with: “In the UK this generally means all the attitudes, systems and procedures, the effect of which regardless of intention, creates and maintains the power, influence and well-being of white people at the expense of black and other ethnic minority people.”
Stereotyping should be matched with: “Making judgments or statements about the qualities of individuals which are then generally attributed to everyone in the group or groups of which they are a member.”
Other workshop activities might include the following:
* Identify an example of a personal non-work situation when you felt that you were being discriminated against.
* How did you feel? What were the consequences?
* What are your perceptions of the diverse individuals/communities that you deal with in the course of your work?
* What effect might these perceptions have on the way you communicate with these individuals/communities?
* Identify an example of how diversity is successfully acknowledged in your workplace (can be by you personally, a colleague or the organisation).
* Identify an example of how diversity could be more successfully acknowledged in your workplace (can be by you personally, a colleague or the organization).
You will also need to set some ground rules so that the participants feel comfortable/safe enough to take risks, as taking risks is required in order to learn.
To read the question that inspired this answer and other members' responses, click here.
