Open Space Egypt in the Egyptian newspaper!

Youth Dialogue in Owen's Way

If the dialogue is the most important civilized way to stand the others and solve the problems between people, so the tools and the ways of dialogue could be different from generation to a generation and from time to time, but it leads to the same result which is the people communicate to reach solution for a problem or conflict case.

Long time ago there was Dar ElNdwa "house  of speech", in the age before Islam and in the next ages there was round tables for discussions and workshops , but it was prepared with an agenda to control the discussion which limits the participants with a certain points and agenda and they have to stick to it .

This old way made the participants really stick to their points of views within the discussion but offline the discussion in the coffee breaks they limit free their ideas and suggestions and they became welcomed to hear the others' and this way is the best way to achieve the realistic solutions for the discussed  problem , and from here came the Open Space methodology way which has been invented by the American Owen who figured out that the Important subject and discussion during the meetings take place during the coffee breaks while the people drink coffee, so he wondered why we don't run meetings in that way and from here came the idea of Open Space .

This idea started to be spread around the Worlds especially between youth to solve the society’s issues. The idea of Open Space came to Egypt  by a group of youth who are trying to spread it to participate into solving the national arguments and the problems, in this came as a youth initiative to promote the idea of general discussion about the number of general issues and problems inside the country which the people failed to reach to a one solution for it this group consisted of 3 persons and they are the Eng. Eslam Erman, Accountant Ramy Mortada & Student Hala Faraj who are Working on promoting and spreading this idea with the help of the expert of the Open space Egypt the German Claudia Gross who is considered as international expert in this methodology .

Eslam Erman told me that the open space is a simple way to organize active meetings and workshops for people and Organizations. The discussion groups could be from 5 persons to 2000 persons , The Open Space Methodology allows dealing with complicated problems into short time, and the period of the meetings could be one, 2 or 3 days . And they invite the participants through the Open Space Egypt website and the Facebook group.

 Erman has added that honestly there is no  one managing the discussions because there is no prepared agenda cause everybody is responsible for leading the discussion, so it's a different way of dialogue. who suggest a subject became the responsible for moderating it , and about how is the open space events  running so that it starts with seating into a circle then the facilitator who is responsible for leading the day starts with explaining what is open space and presenting shortly the theme then asking the participants to suggest ideas and suggestions and issues to be discussed into small groups .

Translated by: Hala Faraj and Ramy Mortada

The 20thWorld Open Space on Open Space