Days before the New Year: not a good time for a meeting

New Iranian year starts with the “spring”. That is a good sign for a country of four seasons like Iran where “spring” as a season is a time for flowers to flourish, for trees to boast of their attractive and colorful blossoms, and for the sky to rain on mountains, deserts and plains (we call it "spring rain" or "baran bahari"). For families, the days ending to the New Year is a time for a full-fledged cleaning as we call it in Iran “khaneh tekani”. All family members have to participate in such a tedious work. Families may rush to bazaars to buy new clothes and shoes, suits or other new things; With the new year to start, everything can become new and fresh (I hope people do not fall into a culture of consumerism and try to use and reuse those things are still usable). The municipality cleans towns and cities (not every year, of course). In certain communities, people come together to clean the community too. Also it is the time for planting young saplings. Many environmental NGOs plan sapling-planting programmes starting from two weeks before the New Year when the cold weather gradually finishes.

With all these events and ceremonies, there is always another expectation: this is a time for evaluation. This is a good idea and I really welcome that. However, in practice, the story is different. Why? Because, nobody has enough time for a group meeting. People in villages are busy with their own local activities for the New Year; some people are thinking to have trips to other places; and as I explained many people are involved in pre-Norouz activities; therefore it could be an over-expectation from the members of a group to have meeting before the New Year. As a facilitator, even me, I have always been busy before the New Year and then I could not be in a community or in a village to facilitate a meeting. There is not even a good time for evaluation workshops. Therefore, my suggestion, based on my experience, is to forget all about a meeting before the New Year.

Norouz creates a time of refreshing, and while we take distance from all our group activities, it can be an appropriate time to think about new things, creative ideas and effective changes in the group. All group members may be requested to think about these issues, and the first meeting after the new year, could be a meeting of brain storming about such ideas.

However, when a “year” ends, there is a tendency to produce “annual reports” or "evaluation meetings" and as I told, such reports or meetings are really necessary. This will help to the scale-up of the community empowerment. But they should not be done during the days of “Norouz-busy-time”. The framework could be designed months before, and the information and data to be collected beforehand. Even an evaluation meeting is necessary to be held by the group one month before the year ends. 

In certain cases, where it seems required to have a meeting before the new year, then "facilitating a diachronic meeting" could be a good choice. The facilitator has to dedicate much time for contacting the group members without holding a meeting. The feedback and comments are transferred to the members of the group while it seems a dialogue is on-going. The facilitator has to be much talented to go through this time-consuming process. However, the output may be existing. This is exactly like discussions under a message or an image in the facebook. Those online put their message while others may become online afterwards and read the discussion and give their comments. There might be some synchronized inputs but mostly people contact each other in a diachronic way. In a diachronic process, there is no need for a meeting, while the facilitator tries to manage the interaction.

At the end of this short comment, I would like to say: Happy New Iranian Year 1392.