THE RUMOUR

Introduction (5 minutes)

• Welcome the participants
• Introduce yourself and the Ideas Box project (give your name, say that you work for the Ideas Box, explain that the Ideas Box is a centre that implement activities for the community to improve their access to knowledge and information).
• Ask them to introduce themselves (name and how they feel today)
• Introduce the activity: Today we are going to do an activity about rumour. We are going to understand how a rumour is spreading and how to be careful about it.

Ice-breaking game (10 minutes)

·       Explain that you are going to do an ice-breaking game to warm up the participants and to help them improve their listening and focus skills during the session.

·       Gather the participants in one group, seated.

·       Ask one person to stand up in front of the group. The person has to say his/her name aloud. The group has to take a good look at the person.

·       This person will go outside and s/he will change one detail (for example change the finger ring).

·       S/he will come back in front of the group, and the group has to guess what has changed.

·       If nobody finds the detail after a couple of minutes, then s/he can give a clue (like it’s on my arm).

·       Conclude the game by saying how important details can be and how sometimes we do not see the change because it is a small change, but the change is here anyway. Thank the participants for their involvement.

Main activity (70 minutes)

Phase 1 – Game (30 minutes)

Ask everyone to form a straight line.
Ask everyone to turn around and face the other direction.
The facilitator will show a movement to the first person in line (without letting the others see). The movement can be putting the right arm up to the sky and the left hand on the stomach and to jump on one foot. The facilitator can create other movements.
Then the first participant will tap the participant next to him/her and show the movement s/he received from the facilitator. The first participant will then turn over.
The second participant will do the same and the rest of the participants will follow the same rules until the end of the line.
Once the end of the line has been reached, the facilitator will ask the first person to show the movement given by the facilitator, and the last person to show the movement s/he received.
If the movement changed as it passed along the line, the group can discuss the changes that occurred and why it changed.
Do a second round but slightly different: add a message to the movement, and ask participants to go outside and come in one-by-one so they can share the message and the movement without anybody seeing it.
Again, at the end, the facilitator will ask the first person to show the movement and to say the message given by the facilitator, and the last person to show the movement and the message s/he received.

Phase 2 – Discussion (40 minutes)

·       Ask everyone to seat in a circle, where everybody can see and hear everybody.

·       Discuss how the movement and the message changed and evolved when going from one person to another. At the end, it was something different from the first movement and message.

Explain to the participants: You can compare the movement to a rumor, which can change and evolve into something that no longer corresponds with the initial message.
·       Give concrete examples of rumors that had a damaging impact: after the earthquake in Nepal in 2015, there were a rumor saying that a tiger escaped from a zoo because of the earthquake. This rumor created panic and forced populations to move again. Ask if they have similar examples coming from the camp.  Discuss being careful when one receives a new information, because maybe the exact same thing happened and the information may be really different from the original message. That is why it is important to check several times, from several different sources, to be sure about the truth of the message.

·       Note that during the ice-breaking game, the attention to details was the important point. It is the same with information because some details may be correct while some other details may be false.

·       Discuss about where to find reliable information in the camp and who can be asked, like the NGO staff, the CiC, the CwC and the Majhis (the facilitator can give other reliable sources of information, according to the specificity of the camp). Summarize the information provided by participants.

Conclusion (5 minutes)

·       Conclude the activity by a summary of what we learnt today: An information can easily change into something else when it passes through many people. It is important to check where the information comes from when you receive it and to find other reliable sources to make sure that you can believe this information.

·       Thank the participants for their involvement in the activity.

·       Invite the participants to visit the Ideas Box center during free time to use the content or to join a course in the future, to learn more new things.