ENCOUNTER

The core of an exposure and dialogue programme is the face-to-face encounter with poor or socially marginalised people, who are striving to actively improve their living conditions.
For about 3 days the participants visit families in groups of two (usually one woman and one man). They live and sleep in the family home, sharing and experiencing their daily lives. Together they go to work in the fields or the factory, go shopping and to the meeting of the self-help organisation in which their hosts are actively involved.
They are exposed to the reality of the world in which their hosts live – hence the use of the word “exposure” for this phase of the programme.
During their stay they are accompanied by a man or woman who acts as a facilitator. This person helps with translating, explains about cultural differences and smoothes over any awkwardness, he or she knows about the history of the self-help organisation in which the host is active.

Picture series: sharing work and daily life in the Exposure

THREE GUIDING IDEAS shape the days of encounter:

• Help towards self-help: The Exposure enables an encounter from person to person to take place: the guests meet the self-help actors. These are innovative people who have developed strategies for overcoming their situation, in other words they are the holders of knowledge and skills.
• Holistic human development: The visitors learn that the host families are not always just concerned about improving their economic standing in their efforts to overcome their poverty in a sustainable way. They are also seeking holistic development in their lives, development in a cultural, social and political sense.
• Environment: The long and weary path of liberation from poverty and oppression gives the visitors important insights into the links between the individual fate of the host family and the society, and national and international economic and political environment in which they live.

An Exposure is an intensive, complex process that is intellectually and emotionally demanding.

One key aspect in the encounter with the hosts is talking with them on their level. A few essential steps for arranging this have been collected together in a hand-out, which is given to the participants to help them prepare for their visit.

The following text from “Zwiesprache. Traktat vom dialogischen Leben” [Dialogue. Treatise from the dialogue life] by Martin Buber provides the participants with another way of looking at the idea of meeting or encounter.

Observing, looking, comprehending

We have to distinguish between three different ways of perceiving a person living before our eyes. The observer is eager to remember and to memorize every detail of the person observed, to 'note' this person. The onlooker is not eager at all. He assumes an attitude enabling him to see his object and waits without any expec¬tations to see what he is offered.

The observer and the onlooker have certain things in common, namely the wish to perceive the person living before their eyes, and this they do in such a way that they see this person as an object separate from themselves and their personal lives, who can be 'properly' perceived for the very reason that he is separate from them.

Something different happens if, in a receptive moment of my personal life, I meet someone with something about him, something I can neither define nor understand, which 'speaks' to me. What this person 'says' to me may be something about himself, for example that he needs me. It may, however, be something about myself.

The effect when something is 'said' to me is completely different to that of observing or looking. This person has ceased to be my object: I have become involved with him. I may have to perform a task for him, or I may just have to learn something ¬what is important is only that I 'accept'. I may have to respond immediately, directly to that person. Or, it may be that a long and complex transmission precedes my response and that my response is to be given in another place, at another time, to another person, in who knows which language, and that now the only thing that matters is that I accept that I am the one who will respond.

This way of perceiving shall be called comprehending.

Martin Buber, Zwiesprache [Dialogue]
Traktat vom dialogischen Leben [Treatise from the dialogue life]

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