Alligator river story - Facilitation script
1. Introduce the exercise as an experiment to see how our personal identity, beliefs and values
can influence our judgments. “Can anybody be really neutral?”
2. Mention that the story you are going to read in a moment is purposely full of stereotypes
and unspoken prejudices. That is done also because that’s how real life is. The exercise is a
classic of conflict resolution training. It has been developed by the Canadian for International
Conflict Resolution (CICR) and has been used to train many UN staff, from ASG to P level. It
has also been approved by gender experts.
3. Start reading the story aloud.
4. Distribute the text to participants.
5. Ask them to look at the back of the page, list on the first column (Column A) the 5 main
characters and rank them from the most honourable to the least honourable (if they ask for
a definition of “honourable” respond that it’s up to them to define). This first part of the
exercise needs to be done individually.
6. Then ask them to choose a partner and write down on Column B the list of their partner,
without asking them the reason for their choices.
7. Next step is to ask the pairs to discuss their respective choices and come to an agreement
for a common list to be written down on Column C.
8. Give them enough time to discuss and laugh. It’s normally a very funny moment.
9. Then open the floor for plenary discussion. Ask these questions to guide the discussion:
a. How did it feel to do the exercise?
b. Was it difficult to agree on a same list? Why?
c. Did anyone had exactly the same list?
d. Who put Abigail as the most honourable? Why?
e. Who put Vana as the most honourable? Why?
f. Who put … as the most honourable? Why?
g. Who put Abigail as the least honourable? Why?
h. Who put … as the least honourable? Why?
i. [You can play with questions on characters depending on time available. Use this
moment to save or buy some time in order to align yourself with the original
schedule].
10. Then take the floor and say:
a. “what if I told you that Abigail used to be married to Sinbad…would that change
your judgment? Yes? No? How?”
b. “what if I told you that Gregory is not in love with Abigail?...”
c. “what if Abigail and Gregory are both 80 years old and not young as most people
would assume?”
11. Close the session by saying that nobody can really be objective in their assessments
because we all carry our own cultural baggage full of assumptions, values and beliefs that
drive our judgement. That is why in order to analyse conflict we need some tools and
instruments to guide our assessment and try to make it as objective as possible.