Programme season is in full swing and thousands of CISVers are currently participating in international programmes or will depart shortly. All over the world, CISVers are getting ready to play, discuss, and share their experiences on diversity. All over the world, leaders, staff members, and JCs are planning the perfect activities to facilitate these discussions.
To help them out, to help YOU out, the Diversity Team has gathered some resources (from both inside and outside of CISV) where you can find activities about diversity for all ages and programmes.
Remember that planning activities is a game where almost everything is allowed, so don’t be afraid to build on someone else’s ideas, adapt someone else’s activity plans, or mix and match parts of different activities. And if you come up with a great new activity, don’t forget to send it to activities@cisv.org so that the entire CISV community can have access to it!
CISV International – Activity database
You probably already know this one, or at least you probably should know it, but we could not start without it. This is the activity database of CISV International, the place where the activities that you send to the email mentioned above end up! You can find activities divided by programme and by content area. Needless to say, you will have to click on “diversity” to get all the activities on the topic. However, we will not be offended if you browse the other content areas as well.
Kompaz team – Diversity in heArts
The Kompaz project is a collaboration between CISV Colombia and CISV Norway. The 2017-2018 team focused on diversity and produced a lot of very useful material on the topic. They also actively collaborated with the Diversity team and we have already presented them in our first post back in January.
The booklet they put together, “Diversity in heArts”, aims to explore and reflect on the socially constructed “boxes” we often find ourselves in and how they shape our relations and societies. Other than being a very good read and extremely well designed, it contains a lot of ready-made activities for all tastes.
CISV International – 2014 archive
If you’ve been in CISV long enough, you probably know this already. 2014 was also the year of diversity. So why not go and take a look at what was done then and see what can be recycled today?
The 2014 archive is available to download on the bottom tab on the left side of this page. It contains blog posts, articles, and inspiring activities to give you a kick start if you’re out of ideas.
International Junior Branch – Branch Out project
If you already checked out the 2014 archive, you may have spotted this project already. But we like it so much that we thought it deserved a list entry of its own. Branch Out is the content area project developed by IJB in 2014. It is split into six steps that guide you deeper and deeper into diversity discussions. Each step is a fully planned session, including all attachments and materials. The link directs you to Step 1, an introductory activity about sexuality and gender diversity, but we’re confident you will easily find all the other steps from there.
Council of Europe – Cultural heritage and cultural diversity lessons: a handbook for teacher
This document, produced by the Council of Europe, contains pre-made lessons and activities on cultural heritage and diversity for various age groups. The activities are designed for a school settings, but they are really well adaptable to a CISV camp.
The Council of Europe produces a lot of really good resources on various topics of interest for CISVers. So check out their website and browse through their resources to get ideas and inspiration.
Pennsylvania State University – Diversity discussion starters
Here’s an article published by Penn State University (USA) containing a series of texts, poems, and anecdotes that can easily spark conversations about diversity. They also provide a list of questions for each resource to make it even easier.
If you’re still out of ideas, we also found a follow-up article, by the same authors with ready-to-do activities about diversity: More diversity activities for youth and adults.
Donald Clark – Leadership and Developing Diversity and Inclusion
Here’s some ideas about leadership, diversity, and inclusion from a personal development consultant. We found this article particularly interesting as it discusses diversity detached from an idea of culture and nationality and more as a mean of personal development. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you will find some interesting activities on the topic that may be a good starting point for older participants to discuss identity, personality and diverse group dynamics.
In Conclusion…
This list is far from being a conclusive list of all the resources with activities about diversity that you can find out there, but we really hope it helps navigate the topic and provides inspiration for activities and topics of discussion.
Did we miss your favourite resource? Did you use any of these and you want to thank us for this post? Do you just feel like saying “hi”? Don’t hesitate to shoot a message at diversity@cisv.org to let us know.
Cheers and happy CISV programmes,
The Diversity Campaign Team
