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The experienced advocate of population and other social development issues attempts to make advocacy interventions both interesting and memorable. Workshop "energising games" can be particularly powerful tools for advocates. Precisely because these games are pleasurable and involve the whole body rather than merely the head, they are memorable. The impact of the experiences felt during an energising game is even greater because that impact is absorbed by the group. Each participant is aware that everyone else is experiencing similar reactions.

• demonstrate that attitudes in the public are receptive to a particular advocacy initiative;
• convince the people playing the games that the changes desired by the advocates are necessary and feasible; and
• promote the advocacy cause itself by providing justifications for the changes being promoted.

  Ms. Aradeon during an advocacy training presentation

Playing appropriate games can have an impact whether the players are members of the general public or are members of the secondary audience for advocacy--the people who can influence the decision-making leader. Either group can participate in an advocacy campaign by sending a message about their own changing attitudes. In this article, I would like to introduce Southpac readers to a typical energising game that can double as an advocacy tool.

The Family Size Game is one of the energising games that advocates can use in the preliminary stages of an advocacy initiative. The Family Size Game allows the advocates to determine if family- size desires are already becoming smaller among the peers of the people playing the game.

According to the Webster dictionary a peer is ‘one that has equal standing with another; one belonging to the same societal group especially based on age, grade, or status.’ Thus the peers of rural nurses would be other educated people living in rural areas. The peers of an urban out-of-school male youth group would be similar urban male youths. If, as is often the case, urban family-size desires have become significantly smaller without this transition being actually recognized by the decision-makers, the Family Size Game can demonstrate, physically, that this transition has begun to take place or is already well-established.

Regardless of any realistic worries a Government may have about its capacity to cope with its post-independence baby-boom, leaders will avoid advocating for smaller families unless there is evidence of some public support. Use the results of the Family Size Game to convince leaders that important peer groups will support advocacy for smaller families.

The Family Size Game is a cost-free survey with immediate, if imperfect, results. You can use it as a form of qualitative research the way you use focus groups. Play the game with three or four groups of participants from the same peer group. If you get similar results, you can be reasonably confident that you have identified the family-size attitudes of that peer group. Start with educated people because they are most likely to have changed their attitudes. Perhaps playing the game with rural women will also reveal that they have begun to change their attitudes.

If and when you play the game with members of a peer group that has not yet changed their attitudes, omit the debriefing. Instead, treat the game as an energiser for relaxation and team-building.

During the game, the movement of the participants often demonstrates the feasibility of advocating for

smaller families. The participants start out crowded in the middle because their parents had families with FOUR OR MORE children and end up clustered under the TWO and THREE children signs. As the participants cluster around the smaller numbers, they see the trend towards desiring smaller families.

Play the game during workshops for any and all types of groups. It is fast, easy, fun, and dramatically revealing.

a) to make participants aware of generational changes in desired family-size and current family-size norms within the participants’ segment of the population; and

b) to energize the participants by getting them to move around the room quickly and form different groups

1. Cards:

-Make these five large cards: ZERO, ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR OR MORE.
-Tape one of these cards in each corner of the room on the wall and place the FOUR OR MORE card on the floor in the centre of the room.

2. Optional Tally Sheet: - Prepare a tally sheet on butcher paper, blackboard, or whiteboard.

Directions: Ask participants to follow the directions as quickly as possible.

1. How many children did your parents have? Please go to the corner of the room that has the number of children your parents had. If your parents had four or more children, please stand in the middle of the room.
2. How many children do you have? Please go to the corner of the room that has the number of children you have. If you have four or more children, please stand in the middle of the room.
3. How many children do you want your son to have? Please go to the corner of the room that has the number of children you desire for your son. If you desire four or more children, please stand in the middle of the room.
4. How many children do you want your daughter to have?….. (Continue asking questions from #3.)

Alternative Directions for unmarried youths and adolescents:
Change the family categories to the following: grandfather’s family, parents’ family, and own family-size desires.

Optional Directions for use with Tally Sheet:
After each question, record the numbers standing in each corner and in the middle.

Debriefing Discussion:
Ask everyone to return to their seats and to discuss what the game revealed about the following topics.

Changing family-size attitudes:

• Did you notice any changes in family-size between your parents and your children’s generation?
• What happened to the number of people moving to the centre of the room?
• What happened to the number of people standing under the #TWO sign for two children only?
• What size family do most of the participants want for their children?
• Why do people prefer smaller family sizes?

The appropriateness of promoting smaller family-size and family planning as an advocacy issue:

• Did you realise that people want such small families?
• Do you think our leaders are aware of this reduction in the people’s family-size desires?
• Do you think many less well-educated rural men/rural women/rural members of X church/etc. have also reduced their family-size desires?
• How can we find out using the Family Size Game?

Gender differences with respect to family-size desires:

• Do men and women want the same family sizes for their children? Why or why not?
  
• Is there a difference in the family size people want for their sons versus their daughters?
  
• What does it tell us about our attitudes to gender roles?

   

  Tally Sheet: Changes in desired family size
  # of children desired by	0 children	1 child	2 children	3 children	4 or more children
  Father's family
  Own family
  Son's family
  Daugther's family

This reconfirms the attitudes of those who are in the process of changing and opens the eyes of those who are clinging to the old beliefs. During the debriefing, participants share information about the benefits of smaller family sizes. Their reasons for wanting smaller families get reinforced among the remaining opponents who realise they are clearly in the minority. Thus the Family Size Game also uses the power of participant peer pressure to promote the advocacy cause itself.

By Susan Aradeon,
CST Adviser in Population Advocacy and IEC

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