Exercise / ‘What are you nervous about?’ The objective of this exercise is to expose the individual fears and concerns of the respective participants and then to address them through examples and personal experience. STEP 1: Ask the participants to answer the following question. (This is an individual exercise, so the group can remain in plenary.) • What are you nervous about with regard to engaging the community? STEP 2: Compile a list of the different responses and group the responses into similar categories. STEP 3: Use personal experience, as well as experiences from within the group, to address the different categories of concern. Understanding the importance and influence of perceptions in engaging the community Once it has been established that there are problems and challenges in engaging the community, it is necessary to further investigate the primary cause of those problems and challenges, namely the problem of perception. The best way to illustrate the problem of perception is through the use of visual examples and exercises. Exercise / ‘Iceberg’ In this exercise, the facilitator uses the image of an iceberg to highlight the fact that what a person sees is not always the whole story. In other words, people or organisations are like icebergs: the part that is visible to the outside world is only a small portion of the full entity. Therefore, in dealing with people, participants should try to find out what is lying below the surface. It is often at this level that the true story can be found. Characteristics of community members The purpose of this theoretical input is to provide participants with a tool that can assist them in navigating the difficulties caused by communities and their individual members. The previous exercises will have highlighted the importance of identifying and dealing with perceptions and this input should now provide participants with a practical tool with which to deal with this problem. When approaching community members, you will encounter different types of personalities • Bystanders/apathetic citizens: »» View conflicts as external to them; »» May view the situation as being under control; »» Do not wish to be involved in issues; and »» Are suspicious that initiators are ‘stirring up trouble’ or wasting their time. Module 3: Dialogue in community healing 49 3