Here's an alternative to lecturing about a topic when you want important information to be transmitted: have people find their own successful experience! This tool uses individual work, small groups and then large group to help the group access its own wisdom about a particular topic (you decide the topic based on the elicitive questions you use: fundraising, carrying out a successful protest, leading a group, overcoming a challenge).

Some assumptions:

It is validating and empowering to learn from our own experience
Most people can remember a positive experience from their own lives and use it
The learning becomes reinforced by sharing it with others
The learning becomes reinforced by being put in a larger framework

1. Closed-Eye Process

a. Explain what it will be (Include diagnostic question "How many of you . . .")
b. Form sharing groups (3-4 in a group, maybe 5)
c. Ask groups to decide who will share first, second, third . . .
d. Relaxation (deep breathing, letting go of tension in body)
e. "I invite you to remember a time when . . . ." "If you're remembering more than one time like that, choose one for this exercise"
f. "Bring it as vividly to mind as possible" (use eye channel, ear channel, body/movement, feelings/emotions)
g. The punch line. For example, "What qualities or characteristics inside you enabled you to do that?" "What lessons did you draw from that experience for your own learning?"

Walk them through this, announcing amount of time per person. The larger the workshop, the more important to be formal and insistent on this. (It may not be culturally appropriate to walk them through individual time limits; in that case, tell them how much total group time they have and announce "You've used one-third of your time," "You've used two-thirds of your time.")

Use newsprint to "harvest" from individuals. It may be necessary to say that we don't need agreement at this point; the main thing is that there's a chance for individuals to put forward their perspective.

Note that this is a good chance for the facilitator to frame (put a context around) the material, in order to anchor it more securely for learning. Whenever possible, connect people's comments to general principles, or to emerging themes in the workshop. A brief story or anecdote may work well here. Often it's possible to describe briefly a resource, like a book or an article or a hand-out. In conclusion, be sure to invite people to study the list, for memory or even for fresh generalizations/principles.