What challenge inspired this recipe?
The activity has the goal of having the participants reflect and share opinions on different aspects of their life in a shared house: how to actually manage and take care of the common areas.
Second, there is a social aspect, meaning how to organize life and common tasks be-tween the different flat mates. In this way it is possible to improve the relationship with them by reducing misunderstanding and friction but also by working together toward a common goal.
Third, there is also a component focused on sustainable behaviors that can be adopted in order to be more eco-friendly while managing the house.
Ingredients :
3 tables; 3 flipchart sheets; markers
Step by step guide
Intro
(5 minutes)
Start the workshop with a series of statements to get the participants thinking
and to observe differences of opinion. They can start in a crouch down position. When the answer is “yes”, they stand up and make a good gesture. If the answer is
“no”, they stay down.
-“I think that the communal areas of a house should be cleaned with water 1x a week”
-“I like one everyone does their own washing up when they’ve finished cooking”
-“We should share our washing to make the best use of the washing machine”
-“The bin bags are too expensive”
Then, 3 tables are set up, each with a flipchart and markers. A different theme for each table : household and home management; energy saving; money saving. Switch of table every 15 minutes (=45 minutes of discussion).
One person must remain at each table to report to the next group and to the
and then to the whole group.
Questions/input for the “spokesperson” of the table:
Flipchart 1 : Housekeeping
Frustrations they may have about housekeeping
How they organize themselves or how they would like to organize themselves for the cleaning the house, washing up, cooking, sorting rubbish.
“Tips to make housework seem less of a chore, to avoid frustration
frustration among residents
Flipchart 2 : Energy saving
What are you doing to save energy?
Show images of good/bad behavior in terms of energy consumption with an with an explanation on the back. Let them discover one and then the other and realize the consequences.
Things they think they could do in the future.
Flipchart 3 : Money saving
What are the expensive things for you?
Are there alternatives or cheaper options?
Share good advice on how to reduce costs during your project
Discussion and debriefing. (10 minutes)
-Share a few tips on how to make life and organization easier in a community, e.g. organizing small flat-share meetings to draw up list the chores to be done and cross-examine each other on the how often everyone should do their chores; draw up a little
charter or discuss the organization of communal areas (e.g. invite a few people over, put a note on the group etc.). The important thing is to be aware that that there are differences of appreciation between everyone.
Talk about volunteers’ financial difficulties (of which we are aware), and share the different know about), and share the different “tricks” to avoid spending too much money.
Explain why we are talking about energy at the moment (crisis and
scarcity of resources)….it’s everyone’s business
Share the “Housing management” guide.
Important to highlight!
The participants gain an insight on proper house management and techniques that can be used to make cleaning look cool or at least less boring.
At the same time they have time to think about what is done in their house and how to improve the process.
Depending on the activity, there is also a certain degree of interaction between them, that can be used to get to know each other better.
Final remarks, there is also a component focused on sustainable lifestyle and eco-friendly behaviors that is never a bad thing to have.
Last last thing: we can also take the feedback of the volunteers to integrate the house management document and make it better for the next ones
We recommend presenting this workshop in the lightest way possible. It is important to get feedback from the volunteers so that they can feel that they opinion is taken into consideration. |
