Puerto Rico Engagements: World Café Discussions

What is a World Café?

A World Café is a model for engaging people in a series of small and large group discussions. In a World Café format, conveners typically set up a venue with multiple small group discussion tables. Different or the same discussion questions may be used at each table and for each “round” of discussion. Discussion questions are typically related to a larger overall theme.

An example of a World Café event might look like this:

• The moderator directs participants to break up into small groups, usually of four to six members, around each table.
• Each group discusses the question that is at their table for a specified amount of time (e.g., 10-20 minutes).
• A note taker or table “host” may take notes, or notes may be written on a large sheet of paper for the next group to see. Participants’ sharing, writing, and drawing of their ideas is encouraged in each round.
• After the specified time period, the moderator asks people to stop and move to a new table. Members from one table can scatter to other tables to form new groups, so that people inter-mix and ideas can spread between members of different groups.
• For the next round of discussion, a new question may be asked, or the same question may be asked but now discussed among the new group. If there is a table “host,” that person may share with the new table members a brief summary of what was discussed by the prior group.
• Often World Café discussions have at least three rounds of discussion, so that each person has been part of three differently-composed groups.
• At the end of the small group discussions, a larger plenary discussion may be used to summarize and discuss overall results and insights. Another option is for the same group to move together to a new table so they can speak to a new host and see what the prior group wrote down at their tables.

The World Café model is flexible and can be adapted to different contexts, topics, and numbers of discussion participants.

Source: The World Café (2020). World Café Method. Available at http://www.theworldcafe.com/

World Café Question Examples

At both of Puerto Rico’s youth engagement sessions, questions and themes discussed in the three World Café discussion rounds included:

• First round: What does the word conflict mean to you? When you hear the word conflict what do you think of? What types of conflict have you seen amongst your peers at school?
• Second round: How do you think that your friends and peers can resolve conflict positively at school?
• Third round: What type of things can help you resolve peer conflict? Would these things include education on a topic or mediation?

Questions discussed by adult community leaders also centered around conflict:

• First round: What does the word conflict mean to you? When you hear the word conflict what do you think of? What types of conflict have you seen amongst your neighbors and community?
• Second round: How do you think your neighbors and your community might positively resolve their conflicts from within the same community?
• Third round: What types of things can help to resolve these conflicts as a community? Would education about any subject be included among these things? And mediation?