dialogues, proposals, stories for global citizenship

Exchanging experiences, a method

dph proposes a method that collects, disseminates and analyses information that is useful to citizen’s actions. For in order to act with a perspective of global citizenship, or even to seek inspiration in other people’s work – in spite of all the differences due to context – it is fundamental to use field work as a spring board for making useful comparisons and establishing relevant mutual questions: the fundamental issues are often the same, although the solutions may differ from place to place.

The dph method involves several stages

1) Writing: describing and formulating one’s own analysis

This is the intellectual exercise that involves writing the dph sheet. The constraints of writing a short text oblige people to be precise and structured and concise. It is necessary to use simple, concrete words, and avoid excessive use of abstract terms, in order to avoid generalisation or a theoretical approach different from reality.

2) Choosing the key words that characterise the text

The effort of progressive structuring continues by coding using « descriptors » that represent the indexing. This obliges people to identify the main themes dealt with, in order to translate this into key-words, which is why the structure of the thesaurus is so important: the choice of words, their definition, and even more so the relationships that they represent, be they hierarchical or « neighbours » become the decisive elements for the structuring of our representations of reality.

3) Sheet search in the database

Another operation involves searching for sheets that deal with a given theme in order to identify them and constitute a file of the various experiences and analysis that are already available in the database.

4) Transversal analysis of all the sheets

Transversal analysis involves the progressive discovery of the analogies and/or complementary aspects that exist between different experiences and reflections in the files collected, with a view to extracting aspects that they have in common.

5) Producing collective texts based on realities

The shared preoccupations identified through transversal analysis can be grouped as files, platforms, declarations, prospective analysis, proposed actions or charter.

Working right through this process involves producing texts for collective use who essential aspects are based on reality, described in such a way as to make it possible to extract the ideas and not, as is often the case, to apply predefined concepts to the reality. If reading these texts can in some way contribute to reinforcing or improving actions, then the dph methodology is reaching its goal.