General Promotional Piece

PERCShops! By: Jackie Adams What the critics say...

"The most fun I've had in days," said one participant.

"The snowball fight was great!" exclaimed another.

"It stretched my mind and heart," was one comment.

"It exceeded my expectations," said someone else.

What are these people talking about? A party? A jaunt through the snow? A PERCshop? Yes, that's it. The above people are all former PERCshop participants. You too can experience the thrill and excitement of untamed learning and socializing; all you have to do is make a date with PERC and attend one of its monthly PERCshops.

The series of 12 workshops cover the range of skill sets that groups need to thrive and be effective, including working with volunteers, conflict resolution, and leadership skills.

"PERCshops are kind of strange. They're half social and half teaching. The social side is an instant community kind of thing. The committee members really put an effort into making people feel like a group. That's the part I really enjoy: meeting new people who are deeply involved in important causes," says Evan Hughes, a PERC volunteer and former participant.

PERCshops don't just fill a social need; they also serve as a way to educate people who are active in social movements or groups.

According to Evan, "So often, people in social justice movements are busily trying to do everything their cause needs them to do, but never have the time to stop and think how their organization is working (or, more importantly, isn't working), or how their cause fits into society. PERCshops are all about explaining these things -- making activists do what they want to do better."

He adds, "They're also neat because they talk about the "theory" of organizing for social change. They talk about the theoretical aspects of movements and how society acts and reacts to them. There is no leadership training course for activists. There aren't university programs we can attend that tell you how to be an activist, so everyone who does it learns by mistake. PERCshops are the nearest thing we have to training courses; they teach us how to make things that are so important to us, important to society."

Shoma Sinha, a former PERCshop committee member, agrees with Evan. "I can definitely say that the PERCshops are a great experience to be part of, as both a performer and a participant. The workshops are a fun way to learn about working with others as well as learning about yourself. The interactive and friendly manner of the workshops makes it easy to learn about new concepts and try out new ideas. Only with role-plays, songs, 'games', food and funny acronyms, it doesn't feel so much like 'learning'," she says.

Evan recalls a PERCshop that used fairly unorthodox methods to teach participants about communication skills. "My most interesting PERCshop was when there was an activity where we were in groups of four divided into pairs. The first pair in each group would build something out of tinkertoys and then write instructions on how to build it while the other pair waited outside in the hall. The first pair then disassembled their tinkertoy and left the instructions for the second group to build their own copy. Our carefully laid out instructions proved to be useless. No matter how simple and straightforward we thought they were, the second pair found it impossible to figure out what we wanted them to build. It really showed how context, explanation, and feedback were important in getting people to do tasks," he says.

Shoma stresses the fact that the teachings of PERCshops are not forgotten once the workshop is done. "A lot of the things you learn are applicable in so many other areas of our everyday lives that afterwards I found myself often thinking, 'this is the perfect time to try this out,' or 'this is a perfect example of... '," she says.

To find out more information about PERCshops, call PERC at 230-4590 or visit the PERCshops link.