Training
The day-long NCBI Prejudice Reduction Workshop has several objectives. Participants are asked to disclose information identity groups to which they belong so that they can celebrate their similarities and differences, recognize the misinformation they learned about various groups, identify and heal from internalized oppression, the discrimination members of an oppressed group target at themselves and each other, claim pride in group identity, understand the personal impact of discrimination through the telling of stories, and learn hands-on tools for dealing effectively with bigoted comments and behavior.
The NCBI workshop is experiential in order to move people to new understandings about oppression and prejudice because of its focus on personal stories. All NCBI programming is always co-led or co-facilitated to demonstrated how people can support each other's leadership and be effective allies to one another across group lines. For these reasons, trainer teams typically cross groups lines of sex, race, age, sexual orientation or several of these.
As in any other workshop the facilitators take the time to review some ground rules as well as give an overview of the day. The first part of the workshop is designed to create some safety among the attendees by offering them a chance to see the things that they hold in common with each other. From this exercise, participants have a chance to share their multiple identities with another participant.
From this base, the model then moves to exposing stereotypes we all hold of each other. After processing that information, participants then look at that ways in which they have internalized these stereotypes of the groups to which they belong.
Following these exercises, participants have the opportunity to participate in caucuses choosing one of their identities to focus on. The caucus reports allow participants to share things they never want to hear about their group again as well as things that they want participants to know about their group and things they never want to hear about their group.
The next section, Speak Outs, a few people are asked to share a story of a time when they experienced painful discrimination or mistreatment.
The workshop ends with strategies and intervention skills to help participants learn to interrupt prejudicial remarks, slurs or jokes. During a role-play exercise, participants learn that to effectively mitigate prejudice they must be in a place to listen to the person who made the comment, to engage that person in dialogue, and to allow this person to share their perspective. Participants come to understand that only through listening and engaging people in further dialogue, can they help others move to a new understanding of oppression.
Read more about this topic: National Coalition Building Institute
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