A participatory workshop’s first day is usually reserved for Learning More from Your Participants. Facilitators use icebreakers to achieve this. Icebreakers are techniques used to reduce tension and anxiety, make everyone comfortable to accept and share new information, and also stimulate contribution and commitment to the workshop’s objectives.
YONOO (Your Needs, Offers and Opportunities) is one such icebreaker for a TOF’s first day. The objective is to show the participants the full knowledge, capacity and opportunities available to everyone including the facilitators. It can launch the learning community because everyone will know each other well at the end of this 45 minute exercise.
Steps. Prepare a four column table. Write the numbers 1 to the total number of participants and call the column Participants’ Numbers. Write in column 2: expectations 3: offer and 4: opportunities back home. After explaining the headings, ask each participant to get their respective row numbers. Then, give each participant three cards of varied colours. One for expectations, another for offers and the third, for opportunities. While they write on their cards, turn the board around so the participants cannot see the table you initially explained. Ask participants to pin the cards them on the board in their respective row numbers trying to hide their identities. When everyone finished, show the board to the group.
Processing: Discuss with the group the diversity of the expectations. Inform them that this would be a big challenge to everyone. Facilitators and participants as well. Then proceed with the offers. Confirm that taken individually, the offers will not be enough to meet the expectations but taken together and with everyone contributing their share, the expectations will look achievable. Focus on opportunities back home. Inform everyone that to tap the available opportunities for facilitators, everyone needed to be on their best whilst inside and outside the course. This too is an area that everyone needs to help each other.
Now, distribute a colored sheet of sticky paper (say 3M) and ask everyone to find their perfect partner. How? Ask them to put their numbers on the sticky paper and attach their papers to the corresponding number of their possible partner in Column 1. No one is allowed to select themselves as their partner. When everyone has completed this step, ask everyone to reveal their real identities by writing their names on the corresponding row numbers in Column 1.
Now the facilitator can use YONOO results in forming dyads and other grouping exercises. And then throughout the workshop, it will remind everyone about their needs, offers and opportunities. Facilitator should keep the results visible to everyone, so they YONOO!
