Experiential Learning Course
Adapted from writings in the 1970s,
80s, and 90s. Updated Nov. 2014.
A
Course evolved from experience of people helping themselves and each other
using personal, small group, large group, as well as community processes for
gaining and sustaining wellness.
Course
Process:
Participants engage in
experiential learning in structured experiences and role play
Course
Outcomes
Participants will have
experience in:
o Participating in self-help and mutual-help
o Identifying pre-existing local mutual-help and mutual-help networks
o Establishing rapport with mutual-helpers and mutual-help networks
o Supporting and enabling local mutual-help and mutual-help networks
o Strengthening informal mutual-help networks
o Supporting networking of networks
o Evolving a culture of Self-help and Mutual-help within Organizations
o Evolving Enabling Environments within self-help and mutual-help
Day One
Themes:
o Participating in self-help and mutual-help
o Identifying pre-existing naturally occurring local mutual-help and
mutual-help networks
o Establishing rapport with mutual-helpers and mutual-help networks
Day Two
Themes:
o Establishing rapport with mutual-helpers and mutual-help networks
o Supporting and enabling local mutual-help and mutual-help networks
o Supporting & strengthening
informal mutual-help networks
Day Three
Themes:
o Sustaining a mutual-help enabler role
o Complementary ways for Interfacing service delivery and mutual-help
processes
o Supporting people strengthening their own agency – their own self-help
Day Four Themes:
o Enabling Environments
o Evolving a culture of Self-help and Mutual-help within Organizations
o Evolving Enabling Environments within self-help and mutual-help
Day Five Themes:
o
Integrating all of the experiences
READINGS:
MUTUAL-HELP AS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON
Some features of the
mutual-help phenomenon:
1. It’s already present as a little noticed phenomenon
2. No one is ‘running’ it
3. There’s no ‘organization’ to ‘join’ as a ‘member’
4. Those involved typically don’t notice that they are involved
5. It is self-organizing
6. Nurturing ways that work are widely available within the phenomenon
7. Often, folk engaged in self-help and mutual-help are natural nurturers
(naturally good at nurturing)
8. Networking among self-helpers and mutual-helpers is a naturally
occurring phenomenon
9. What works tends to be passed on during networking
10. Mutual-help is a bio-psychological, bio-social and bio-cultural
phenomenon
11. It is a phenomenon present across the cultures in the SE Asia Oceania
Australasia Region and wider afield
12. In mutual-help, there tends to be bio-cultural universals within cultures, bio-social variation within societies and bio-psychological differences between people (this from an
eleven country feedback in 2004)
13. Mutual-help tends to happen as appropriate to context
14. Mutual-help has a self-help quality to it
15. People receive reciprocal psycho-emotional benefits from mutual-help
16. Mutual-helpers maybe, and typically are, experiencing similar stressors
17. Mobile phone calls and messaging may support the mutual-help processes
18. People do not receive financial reward for their mutual-helping
19. It differs substantially from service
delivery in a number of respects
20. Evaluating takes place constantly as an inherent aspect of mutual-help
21. Mutual-help may be perceived
as a threat by Service Delivery people
22. It can in some contexts be the best support that people receive
23. Mutual-helpers have authentic authority not zero-sum authority; as in, if I have more authority you have less
24. Service Delivery bodies may provide a local-lateral linking role in
supporting mutual-help – refer Government
and Facilitating Grassroots Action and Complementary Ways.
Regarding point 22, a commonly reported statement from
fire-affected people following the Victorian 2009 bush-fires in Australia was
that one of their most pressing emotional needs was to find out about whether
others they knew in the fire affected areas had died or being injured or had
survived and where they were. Typically, the best and only source was other
fire-affected people.
This phenomenon of checking on people’s wellbeing and location
continued for many months afterwards and other locals were the best informers.
This aspect of local mutual-help networking was extensive and largely unnoticed
by professional service delivery people.
Another commonly reported statement was that the most beneficial psycho-emotional support
they received was, again, from other fire-affected people.
A common expression was ‘only those who went through it and who
are going through it can possible understand what I am going through’.
With every respect, another commonly reported statement was that
the mutual-support they receive from other fire-affected people was far better
than what was provided by professional support people.
Mutual Help Pioneers
in Australia
An
Australian community psychiatrist Dr Neville
Yeomans was one of a few pioneers around the world action researching the
healing potency of mutual-help.
Dr Yeomans commenced his research
in 1958 and carried out action research till his death in 2000.
Differences between Service Delivery and Mutual-Help
‘Environment’
is a very different phenomenon in service delivery contexts compared to
mutual-help contexts.
While enabling values may be similar, enabling of enabling environments may differ considerably in these two
contexts. People engaged in mutual-help typically do it as an integral aspect
of every-day life as they randomly meet and spontaneously engage with others.
At times they may pre-arrange link ups. When engaged in mutual-help they are typically
immersed in the moment and have no framing of the moment as ‘doing
mutual-help’.
Mutual-help has little or nothing to do with
integral aspects of typically service delivery.
Mutual-help has little or nothing to do with:
o
Accountability
o
Advocacy
o
Aspirational expectations
o
Assessment
o
Being a volunteer
o
Career
o
Centralized policy – rather organic policy is that which
works
o
Clinical viewpoints
o
Competency
o
Delegation
o
Development
o
Diagnosis
o
Disease prevention
o
Documentation
o
Economics
o
Fund acquittal
o
Funds
o
Income
o
Leadership
o
Liability
o
Malfunction
o
Management
o
Measurement
o
Models
o
Plans
o
Politics
o
Prescription
o
Problems
o
Problem solving
o
Professional indemnity
o
Quality
o
Risk management
o
Science
o
Scientific evidence
o
Service
o
Solutions
o
Steps
o
Structure
o
Systems
o
Teams
o
Treatment
o
Treatment Plans
o
Work
Self-help and mutual-help are very alive, well and vibrant as a social phenomenon
in the SE Asia Oceania Australasia
Region and perhaps throughout the world.
Resonant Links:
o Wellnet
o Interfacing
Alternative and Complementary Well-being Ways for Local Wellness
o
Government and Facilitating
Grassroots Action
o
Laceweb - Community Ways for Healing
the World
o Recognising and
Evolving Local-lateral Links Between Various Support Processes
o
The Fastest
Growing New Social Movement on the Planet
o Sociograms - Figures Depicting the Evolving of Healing
Networks in East Asia Oceania Australasia
o Evolving a Dispersed Urban
Wellbeing Community