53 OUR FEELINGS AND RESPONSES TO CRITICISMS

AIMS

■ To understand how to give people good criticism or feedback in a positive way that helps them do better rather than makes them feel angry or small

■ To recognise helpful criticism and see it as a gift intended to help us do better

KEY IDEAS

■ Criticism is when people tell us something they do not like about us or our behaviour or some way they think we could improve ourselves.

■ Anger and violence are often the result of people feeling disrespected or criticised. It helps if people can learn to handle criticism in a calm and balanced way instead of getting angry or feeling bad.

■ Understand that the criticism is about something you have done, not about you as a human being.

ACTIVITIES

■ Treat criticism as a gift that can help you to be stronger, more confident and able to grow and improve. Criticism can mean that someone cares about you rather than being an attack on you.

■ Learn to tell the difference between true and untrue criticism

■ If you agree with a criticism, say so. Ask for suggestions on how you might change or how your behaviour affects the other person.

■ If you disagree with a criticism, say so and explain why. Ask the person for an example of the behaviour they are criticising.

All groups 30 minutes for each activity

Activity 1: Receiving criticism

1. Ask:

➜ How do we feel when we are criticised by someone?

2. Divide into threes and role-play two situations:

➜ A person giving helpful criticism to someone

➜ A person giving unhelpful criticism to someone

Take it in turns to play the roles, and practise reacting to the criticism in an angry way, a sad way or a calm and balanced way.

In the big group, ask:

➜ What are the things that make criticism helpful or unhelpful?

➜ What is the best way to respond to criticism?

■ Harmful gender norms for females and males can put us in danger of STIs, HIV, HIV reinfection, unwanted pregnancy, abuse and rape.

■ It is good to think about our own ideas on gender norms and how we express these in our lives, and see whether we need to change any.

ACTIVITY

All groups. Adapt the statements to make them appropriate for different age groups. 1 hour

1. Make one sign with a happy face, meaning ‘agree’, one with a cross face for ‘disagree’, and one with a puzzled face for ‘not sure’. Put them in three corners of your space.

2. Prepare some sentences like the examples in the box on the next page

3. Explain that you are going to read out some sentences one by one and people should go to the corner that best shows what they think about the idea in the sentence

4. If they agree with the sentence, they go to the corner with the smiling face. If they disagree, they go to the corner with the cross face. If they are not sure, they go to the corner with the puzzled face.

5. To begin, everyone should stand in the middle of the room.

6. Read out the first sentence. Repeat it and make sure that everyone has understood it.

7. Ask people to think about the sentence and then go to their corner

8. When everyone has gone to their corner, give them a few minutes to talk together about why they chose that corner

ACTIVITIES (continued)

3. Ask people in threes to think about:

➜ A time when someone gave you some criticism that was true

➜ A time when someone gave you some criticism that was not true

Ask them to tell each other about the situations, how they reacted and how the situations turned out.

➜ How could they have changed their reaction to improve the outcome?

Finish by sharing one thing you like about yourself and one thing you like about the other members of your group

Activity 2: Giving helpful criticism

1. In small groups ask people to think of situations where they might want to give someone helpful criticism

2. Ask them to choose someone to act the part of the person who you want to criticise. Role-play giving the criticism as helpfully as possible, so that the person sees it as a gift, not an attack

3. The person being criticised and the rest of the group members give feedback and the person re-plays it until it is helpful.

Don’t yo u th ink yo u are drinking too much? It wo uld be better if yo u co uld th ink more about yo ur health

What right do yo u have to tell me what to do!

Project details: examples of document layout and illustrations from a participatory workshop guide. Client: READY (Resilient and empowered adolescents and young people ) and Frontline AIDS (formerly International HIV/AIDS Alliance). Produced in English, French, Portuguese and Swahili. Note: some characters used in the illustrations are adapted from existing characters provided by the client.