Card front

Train wagons

25m
10 – 30
To get to know each other and recognize the diversity that the people who make up the group represent and relate it to the exercise of human rights.
Sensitize
Human rights: Foundations; Equality: Non-discrimination; Human rights education
Opening
On-site: Indoors, Outdoors
Group dynamic
Children, Adolescents, Adults, Older adults
by Defensoría del Pueblo de Ecuador,
adapted from Técnicas para promover la igualdad y la no discriminación, P. Gallardo, A. Portillo, B. Peña, 2013, México: Conapred, p. 27.
Card back
  • Link with experience10
  • Reflect10
  • Integrate knowledge5
    • The form or characteristics specified for the wagons may vary depending on the characteristics of the public, time, and specific needs of each teaching-learning process.
        Link with experience
        10 min

        1. Ask the group to stand and form a single circle, in a space inside or outside the room.

        2. Ask the participants: What public transportation do you like more? Collect the response of two or three people.

        3. Indicate that this time they will imagine making a trip and that the means of transport is a train.

        4. Explain that they will start walking in any direction within the room or space where the activity is being held, and that at a certain point you will ask them to get together in wagons according to a characteristic that you will announce, they must form groups with the people that share the same characteristic.

        5. Ask if the instructions are clear and give the signal to start.

        6. Wait  until they start to move and announce a few seconds later: "You will be grouped by ... (Indicating each time one of the following characteristics) ":

          • Wagons of people whose first or last names begin with the same letter
          • Wagons of people with the same musical tastes
          • Wagons of people belonging to the same ethnic group
          • Wagons of people who have the same city, country or continent of birth
          • Wagons of people living in the same parish (county / municipality or city)
          • Wagons of people who in their free time engage in the same activity
          • Wagons of people with the same profession
          • Wagons of people that get outraged by the same situation
          • Wagons of human beings
          • Wagons of dignified, free and equal people

          In the last two announcements people usually hesitate a little about the instruction that usually leads them to form a single wagon or group. If that happens ask during the reflection stage: What made you doubt?

        7. Thank the people for their participation in the activity and ask them to return to the places where they were sitting.

        Reflect
        10 min

        1. Invite participants to reflect on the following questions:

          1. Did you enjoy the activity?
          2. What could you know about the other participants?
          3. Did you find similarities with each other? And differences? Which?
          4. Were you surprised by any coincidence or difference?
          5. What relationship do you think this activity has with the topic of human rights?
        Integrate knowledge
        5 min

        1. Point out that this activity allows the recognition of diversity in the group and, therefore, throughout society. This social and cultural diversity is expressed in different ways of seeing, thinking and living in the world, in different places of origin, practices, behaviors, habits or situation in which they may find themselves. This diversity does not make us unequal, just DIFFERENT, and even with these differences all of us are people with equal DIGNITY and equal RIGHTS because of something we share: the fact that we are all human beings, regardless of our sex, gender or sexual orientation, our age, cultural, social or economic situation, or the places that we are from or going to.