Form a circle with the participants sitting in their chairs (no tables), so that they are close together.
Give each participant a balloon and ask them to individually take a few seconds to think about what their biggest dream is.
Ask 3 or 4 participants to voluntarily share their biggest dream.
Tell them now they will bring their dream to live, so they will think they have magic in their hands to be transmitted to the balloon and to the other participants.
Tell them that they can start inflating their balloon and while they do imagine how, as the balloon grows, their dreams become reality, and they experience the happiness that this gives them.
When the balloons are inflated, ask participants to write their dreams on the balloon, or if they prefer to draw something related, then ask them to observe them and try to imagine what it feels like to see their dreams materialize.
Now ask them to stand and turn the chairs around, so that they mark out the area in which they will remain.
Ask for 4 volunteers, preferably not participating in the workshop, and have them stay outside the circle and distributed in different parts of the room or space in which the game is played.
To those inside, ask them to form a circle facing inward and stay very close. Let them imagine that their dream can get much higher, then they can play with their balloon and the higher the balloon reaches , that is, the higher they dare to dream, the closer the possibility of their dreams coming true. Invite them to encourage their dream!
Point out that there is a restriction: They have to watch over their dream because if by throwing it, it goes out of their circle, one of the people who are outside will take it and burst it. Give a pin to each of those 4 people
Give the signal to start and continue the game for up to 1 minute.
Ask:
- How many balloons are left?
- What do you realize with this activity? What is the resemblance with the reality "outside", at school, home, the neighborhood, the province, the country?
- In what ways are our dreams "burst" in real life?
- What is the worst way in which a dream of ours can get killed?
- Now, how can your "burst" the dream, the project of others? Honestly raise your hand and say, Who threw other people's balloons out?
- Who lost their dreams? How did you feel when you lost them?
- How could have the survival of everyones' dreams been ensured?
Point out:
- That there are many risks for dreams, that is there are many times when a project can be seen as not done, sometimes for personal reasons (fears, remaining in comfort zone, etc.) but there are also many external factors that can affect it, these factors can be natural causes, illness, death of someone important in our lives, an earthquake; but they can also be structural (access to health, education, specialized care, etc. not guaranteed). There can also be people that adversely affect the realization of our dream, making fun of it, or even preventing it (intentionally or not) from being achieved. Many of these risk factors constitute violations or threats to our rights, thereof affecting the realization of our life projects or the development of our abilities to achieve them.
- It is also important to check when we are the ones who burst the balloons of others, for example by mocking them, which affects their life project.