First Heroic Improvisation Workshop in the Philippines!

The Philippines is an amazing dynamic place.  My collaborator -- Gabe Mercado -- tells me that the Philippines is used as a marketing test-bed for new consumer products.  I think Philippines is the perfect place to test out new responses to disaster also.  Philippines regularly has floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and typhoon.  We can use this disaster-prone region and make it into a strength for disaster preparedness!

More about Gabe and his theater improvisation troupe at www.spitmanila.com or Facebook at SPIT.

We did our first Heroic Improvisation workshop with 13 participants.  They were improvisors from SPIT, professional trainers and young female business entrepreneurs.

The Heroic Improvisation model - Alert, Ready, Connect, Focus, Move - was valiadated.  And we got some great feedback from the professional trainers.

The first level workshop focuses on changing attitudes of how citizens can participate in disaster response.  Our professional trainer participants helped us clarify this.  We really don't teach knowledge and skills about disaster response.  We teach how to work together to come up with innovative responses.

Because we use theater games, the workshop is very interactive and fun.

We found a few cultural differences between doing the workshop in the US versus Philippines:

1. Philippines more readily trust the group and don't mind falling back and being caught by the group.  That same exercise felt high-stakes in the US.
2. We had a warm-up game called Eagle and Bear.  Because bears are not native to the Philippines, there was some static in the channel while doing this game.

This is a dream come true and could not have gone better!