WAKA · In Nature We Believewaka.gaiaeducation.org/collection/giving-back/
Giving Back
Two hours of work the place actually needed
Shift the group from guest to participant, and end a week of receiving with a day of contributing.
- Duration
- 2–3 hours
- Group size
- Any
- Setting
- outdoors
- Energy
- physical
- Materials
- Tools appropriate to the taskGlovesWater
A training group is a small extractive event: it consumes water, food, firewood, attention and the hosts’ week. This is the correction, and it is not a metaphor.
How it runs
- Ask the hosts, in advance, what they actually need done. Not what would be nice for the group to experience. The distinction matters and the group will feel it immediately.
- Brief it properly: why this job, what it is part of, what it will look like in five years.
- Work. Facilitators work too. This is not a session to observe.
- Stop while there is still energy left, and stand together looking at what changed.
- The host speaks last — one or two minutes on what this means for the place. Not the facilitator.
Good jobs
Clearing a spring. Terracing. Mulching. Firewood. Dry-stone repair. Seed collection. Rebuilding a path that everyone has been complaining about all week.
Bad jobs
Anything invented for the group. Anything that will be undone next week. Anything where the hosts have to supervise more than they gain.
Facilitator notes
- Put it late in the week, not on day one — the group works better once it is a group, and the meaning lands differently once they have received something first.
- Take the photograph of the finished job, not of people working. It is the photograph the hosts will want.
