This is a quick activity to get participants into small groups and a preliminary activity to exploring discrimination.

Who wants you to be in their group?
 

Issues addressed

• Discrimination

Aims

• To get people participants into small groups
• To raise awareness about prejudice and discrimination
• To encourage empathy with the experience of rejection or exclusion

Preparation / Materials

• Coloured sticky, paper dots. For example, for a group of 16 people, you will need 4 blue, 4 red, 4 yellow, 3 green dots, and one white sticky dot.

Instructions

1. Stick one dot onto each player's forehead. Players should not know what colour dot they have.
2. Tell participants that no-one may talk; they may only use non-verbal communication.
3. Tell participants to get into a group with others who have the same colour dots.

Debriefing and evaluation

• How did you feel at the moment when you first met someone with the same colour dot as yourself?
• How did the person with the odd-coloured dot feel?
• How did you find out the colour of your dot?
• Did you try to help each other get into groups?
• In life, what different groups do you belong to, for instance, a football team, school, church, and so on? Can anyone join these groups? Why? Why not?

Tips for the facilitators

Be aware of the group dynamics and be careful who you give the white dot to.

You can take the opportunity to manipulate the composition of the final groups, but do not make it obvious. Let the players believe that the dots were distributed randomly.

Instead of asking participants to get into groups where everyone has the same coloured dot, you could ask them to form groups where all the dots are different, so that you end up with “multi-dot” groups.

If you use the activity simply to get participants into groups; you need not have an odd one out.

Variations

You can also use "jigsaws". Find pictures in magazines or print them out from the Internet and stick them onto thin card. Cut each picture into four or five pieces, depending on the size you want the final small groups to be. Remember to make one jigsaw piece that fits none of the pictures (to be the equivalent of the white spot). Put the pieces into a hat or box and mix them up. Ask participants, without looking, to dip in and pick one piece. Now they have to find the others who have the corresponding pieces to complete the pictures. No verbal communication is allowed. Display the assembled “jigsaw” pictures on a table for everyone to see. You can also choose pictures relevant to the issue or topic you wish to explore

In the debriefing, ask participants what the images portray. You should be prepared to give some explanation.

Suggestions for follow-up

Take action: Review the membership policy of your group or organisation. Can anyone join? What can you do to make your organisation more open and welcoming to everyone?

Move on to another activity: Being the odd one out doesn’t always mean we’ve been excluded; sometimes it’s by choice that we want to stand apart from others and be different. If you want to take a look at what it means to be an individual you could use the activity ‘One = One’.