MOSAIC - The training kit for Euro-Mediterranean youth work

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In the debriefing, try to draw discussion away from personal issues and encourage
participants to see links between their own histories and those of others. The
activity will be most useful if participants can begin to generalise about the role
and importance of history for any individual.
It is important to give participants a feeling for their own power to influence events in
their own lives, without making them feel in any way responsible for any difficulties
they may have encountered so far.
Variations
Participants could be asked to draw a human (or geometrical) figure on paper, with
their history as part of this shape, putting internal influences (like career choices or
personal relationships) inside the shape and external influences (like school or family)
outside.
If you want to avoid discussion of personal incidents, you could ask participants
to think about their local (or national) history in their lifetime.
Ideas for action
Participants could research and try to draw up an alternative history of some event or
period of time – perhaps the period of their lifetime. Half of the group could research
official accounts of the period, using history books or the media, and the others could
research “unrecorded” events. Oral history is a good way to uncover such events: the
group could conduct interviews with parents or people of an older generation.
Suggestions for follow-up
Activity No. 22 “Rebels and freedom fighters” looks at the different ways the mass
media report on major events. Participants could use this to look at the way today’s
events are recorded and then become part of the official history. If you want to pursue
the idea of influencing events, you could look at the activity “Our futures” in Compass,
or “Young people’s paradise”, No. 29 in this T-kit. In these activities, participants think
about how they can shape events in their own locality.
My history