EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION (Mini lecture) The aim in this session is to help participants differentiate between general communication and effective communication, as well as to identify key communication skills. Effective communication helps us understand each other, improve interactions and achieve clarity in situations that are difficult to understand. Communication is more than simply an exchange and sharing of information. Rather, it is an effort to create shared understanding by listening to each other. It is a deliberate action to understand the perspectives, opinions and emotions of another. This is achieved through good communication skills such as active listening, the ability to convey clear messages, and giving feedback. Active-listening skills are very important in community healing, because they help participants gain a shared understanding as well as find solutions for their own problems. Listening skills are used in communication to help individuals deliver clear messages and are effective where communication is carefully planned and facilitated in order to achieve healing in the community. LISTENING SKILLS (Group exercise, discussion and mini lecture) The facilitator should use the exercise that follows to introduce participants to the skill of listening. This exercise will help participants gain further understanding of communication. Exercise • Invite four volunteers to prepare for short plays to be acted out in pairs. • Pair 1: Two people meet. One starts to talk about something and becomes very excited. The other pretends to be listening to the story but actually does not pay attention. Instead of listening, this person does lots of other things, e.g. writing a text message (SMS), cleaning, reading a newspaper, etc. • Pair 2: Two people meet. One is eager to talk about something to the other — it could be any problem he or she is facing at the moment. But the other interrupts all the time, making light of the problem and giving advice before having a complete picture of what the other is talking about. For purposes of debriefing: Discuss the listening part that was demonstrated in the scenes and then answer the following: • What do you think of these kinds of listening, and why do you think that? • What do you do when you want to listen well to others? • What do good listeners do? We have many opportunities to listen to others every day. This is normal for us, but we hardly think about what is good about our listening skills and what we could improve on. We hardly ever think about listening to those who come to us with problems or who are hurting. (Exercise adapted from: Peace together we can! Peace education training toolkit for children and youth) 88 Community Healing: A training manual for Zimbabwe