Co-creation

Involvement=Ownership=Leadership=Co-creation! 

Getting participants involved in your sessions early and often will help them feel comfortable with taking leadership roles and helping to co-create the program experience.

1. Invite participants to read relevant sections from their WWE participant book. This is a good idea if you feel confident in your participants’ reading skills. To avoid putting anyone in an uncomfortable position, ask for volunteers rather than assign reading sections to your participants.
2. Invite participants to lead an ice-breaker activity. At first, you may provide the ideas for ice-breakers, but as soon as they get the hang of them, you can invite participants to make up their own ideas for group ice-breaker time.
3. Invite participants to share photographs from their walks. You can use these photos in many ways - share them on your PowerPoint slides, post them on social media (make sure you have photo releases if they have people in them), use them as discussion-starters (how is it different to walk in town vs out in the country?), or to illustrate themes (see if you can take pictures of wildlife this week).
4. Invite participants to lead familiar stretches. If you are doing stretching activities each week, you can ask your participants to lead the group in the stretches that you have already reviewed.
5. Other? Use your creativity to find ways to invite participation. The important thing to remember is participants can actively contribute to and lead the WWE sessions!  
    

Participants will appreciate and benefit from an environment where they are heard and responded to. Use the following methods to create a responsive environment in your WWE program

1. Pay close attention to what you learn in your pre-course interviews. You will learn a great deal about participants’ lives, contexts, confidence and concerns in the individual interviews you have with them prior to the beginning of the WWE program.  Without calling out individuals, you can reference what you learned by offering scenarios for the class to discuss, providing individualized support between class sessions, and focusing on ways to overcome concerns and barriers that participants have in common.
2. Provide time for participants to reflect and share their reflections. This is a great way to find out what is going well for them and where they may need more support, so you can design activities in a responsive manner.
3. Ask participants what they would like to learn - multiple times, in multiple ways. Asking your participants directly is a great way to get to know their interests. You can do this by offering suggestions of topics they may want to learn about (don’t forget - you have some great nutrition information to share - offer that as an option to see if they are interested!). And you can ask in an open-ended way as well to see if new or unexpected ideas emerge. Work as a team to identify the ideas that have the most interest and traction among the group, and also work as a team to find speakers and resources to respond to unfamiliar topics.
4. Respond to participant requests and questions. By showing your participants that you take their ideas and questions seriously, they will feel heard and valued.  Even if you can’t fulfill their requests, showing them that you have tried to do so will go a long way.
5. Other? Use your creativity to be responsive. Even seemingly insignificant comments from your participants can open the door to responsive facilitation. Discussions about the weather, walking clothing, the sights, sounds and smells of their communities while they’re walking, wildlife in Minnesota, etc. are all fair game for learning time with your WWE participants!
    

We know our participants bring a lifetime of experience and talent with them to our classes.  WWE is a great program in which participants can have the opportunity to share their experience, knowledge and skills with you and the other participants.  

1. Step back from leading discussions. If you get the sense that one of your participants is knowledgeable about a topic, or eager to discuss something, invite them to do so at the next session. Make sure you give them time to prepare and avoid putting them on the spot. Note: Discussion or sharing topics could be anything related to the topic of walking that may be of interest to the group, such as bird-watching, native plant identification, historic sites around town, debating the best clothing for different weather conditions, a craft or hobby that brings joy and peace, etc.
2. Give them the reins with social media groups. If you have set up a private group within Facebook or WhatsApp, your media-savvy participants can keep that group active by adding content and messages. Not only can they show leadership in group communications, but they also foster a greater sense of social support for everyone involved when motivational messages or fun videos are received.
3. Participants can use their cultural contexts as vehicles for learning. Whether you, the facilitator, are from the same cultures as your participants or not, opening up discussion around cultural and social context provides participants with a way of expressing their realities and understanding how that may influence their walking and other health choices. Participants can take the lead in describing and discussing their own culture, sharing to the degree they are comfortable with, and creating a space where culture can be openly acknowledged as an important factor in reaching health goals.
4. Participants can spin off the program to become involved in their communities. It is very common for people who start walking regularly to begin noticing new things about their environments: the condition of the sidewalks, the lighting, the traffic, the greenspace, the community businesses and resources, etc.  When you start hearing these observations from participants, they may be ready for community involvement beyond the Walk with Ease program. Introduce your participants to map-making and walking audits to foster community involvement and expand WWE to include P-S-E elements.