Before the start of public school, we had a short exercise on the pyramid of support. The pyramid of support identifies the various stakeholders in the project and how each group provide support (welfare, logistics etc.) for the other group. Jacqueline and I had the members drew out their own version of the pyramid before explaining to them our version of the pyramid.
The aim of this exercise was to let each members understand their role in this project and also to help in their decision making. Apart from that, the exercise also let the members understood who they could look for help/support when needed. I posted this question to some of the members after the exercise – If you enter a classroom and noticed that your fellow member is busy preparing logistics and the children are waiting for the lesson, what will you do? According to the pyramid of support, if you are a leader you should help out with the logistics so that the fellow member can attend to the children. However, if you are a member, you ought to attend to the children and let the fellow member continue with the logistics.
I felt that in a project, each and every one has a role to play and not all work are glamorous or in the front line. As one of the leaders of this project, I had to deal with the administrative and finance issues. Even though I very much wanted to empower the children, I knew that it was not my immediate responsibilities. As I have mentioned to the members, “at the end of the day all the benefits would go to the children, but different roles have different ways of exacting that benefit.”
