216 Filipino Citizens Ready for the Unimaginable thanks to the Heroic Improvisation Pilot!

Enabled by our sponsors from the Applied Improvisation Network, theater artists in the Philippines and other generous international donors, our Heroic Improvisation team in the Philippines has done mighty work to bring this workshop to Filipino citizens and emergency responders.  

In just over two weeks, our team has piloted this workshop with 12 groups in four regions of the Philippines.   We have had 216 Filipino participants complete the training, ranging in age from 10 to 70 years old.  After testing the workshop with 3 groups of trainers and improvisors, we have taken it to:

• 4 groups of employees (airline, conference center, and school), 
• 3 groups of disaster survivors 
• 1 group of emergency responders and 
• 1 indiginious tribe.

Our team of four facilitators and two facilitators-in-training have validated the Heroic Improvisation process by delivering the workshop in English, Tagalog and Wahri.  We have tested 4 different versions of the workshop for:

• Citizens
• Staff teams
• Disaster survivors (groups less than 16 people) and
• Disaster survivors (groups more than 16 people).

To run the pilot process, we used the principles of the Heroic Improvisation process: Alert, Ready, Connect, Focus, Move.  Because we did 12 runs in 15 days, the workshop improved quickly as we rapidly prototyped it.  Each run was fresh because Gabe Mercado and Dingdong Rosales would adapt our delivery depending on the needs of the Filipino participants in the room.  

The ability of the Heroic Improvisation team to adapt was put to good use when we brought our workshop to Typhoon Haiyan survivors in Tanauan and Tacolban in the Leyte region of the Philippines.  After just over 100 days since the November 2013 landfall of Typhoon Haiyan, the disaster was fresh in the minds of participants when we started the workshops in February 28 - March 1, 2014.  The workshop focused on how to view their recent experience through a heroic lens and self-assess how ready they would be for the next disaster.  At the start of the workshop, participants rated themselves as not very ready for the next one.  At the end of the workshop, participants were amazed at how they transformed their perception of readiness from low to very high.  They also felt empowered to be a leader and follower to respond to the next disaster together.