Ran an Open Space in Vancouver yesterday, another community based one, this one targeting the urban Aboriginal youth community.  Urban Aboriginal youth here in Vancouver face a number of issues, including alienation from their traditional territories and culture, loss of identity, racism, street involvement, including drugs, gangs and prostitution and the usual litany of problems associated with poverty.

A group of youth who form an advisory committee for a government program approached me about doing an Open Space after attending the last one I did in this community in January.  We set it up for today, worked on a theme ("Youth Empowered Solutions" -- they wanted something with a positive acronym), designed the invitation, which resulted in two BEAUTIFUL posters, and they beat the hustings to raise interest.

We ended up with about 50, which was great considering the OS started at 10:00 on a Saturday morning.  An elder opened the gathering with a prayer and we got into agenda setting.  The youth were REALLY exuberant, and 20 topics emerged in no time flat.  As we only had four hours, and therefore two time slots of an hour each, this made for small groups, but the law of mobility was in effect like I have never seen it before. There was such an exchange of bodies that I am certain one or two groups finished with a completely different set of people than those who started!

Reports were hand written which facilitated the quick production of a set of proceedings.  The closing circle was remarkable for the fact that so many of these young people spoke so eloquently about what the process meant to them.  Several people in attendance remarked about how well spoken these folks were, and thought that it boded well for the future leadership needs our Aboriginal community.

By the time we were ready to close, the Elder had left (rats!) and so I found myself in need of someone to say a closing prayer.  This was important as we started the meeting with a prayer and therefore our work couldn't finish until we had a closing prayer.  I asked one of the youth, who had recently returned for an international indigenous youth conference in New Zealand what we could do.  She immediately took charge and had everyone stand in a circle and hold hands.  Then each person in turn spoke one word which summed up the day for them.  Following that, the young woman showed everyone how to "Hungee" which she said is a traditional Maori way of greeting.  You press your forehead and nose against the forehead and nose of the other person and shake their hand. We went around the circle doing this, after which everyone was laughing and complaining about their headaches.  It was a really nice closing, doubly so because it arose from within the group.

After closing everyone grabbed some dots and prioritized the topics, so we snuck in a really preliminary convergence.

The good news is that the youth have asked me to provide them with some basic training in OST and they have made a decision to use OST in all of their conferences, and for their more important planning meetings and retreats.  Once again, the technology finds it's home in the Aboriginal community.

Someone asked me yesterday why Open Space always seems to work, and I replied with the short answer: "I dunno."  I sometimes feel that, in learning and practicing OST, it's as if I have been given a gift from a genie.

"You have one wish"

"Okay, let's see what kind of genie you are.  I wish for a miraculous meeting technology that taps people's Spirit, truly empowers and changes things for the better."

"Done."