What if…? Scenarios
Summary
The What if…? Scenarios activity is designed to assess young people’s awareness and knowledge of available support services they could access for help or in an emergency.
Further Details
This activity uses real-life scenarios to assess program participants’ awareness and knowledge of available support services as well as access to support from family, friends or peers. The scenarios are developed in conjunction with young people to ensure they reflect real-life situations.
The What if…? Scenarios activity requires a facilitator. This can be an adult e.g. the program coordinator, or the activity can be peer-led i.e. a young person from the group who has been attending the group for some time facilitates the activity.
The facilitator describes each ‘What if…?’ scenario and asks the group what they would do in each situation. For example, for a young mothers’ group one of the scenarios might be ‘What if you could not get your baby to stop crying in the middle of the night? What would you do? The facilitator encourages the group to offer suggestions including actions they might take, people or services they would call.
One of the benefits of this activity is that young people are able to learn from their peers who may have experienced one or more of the scenarios. The activity also provides an opportunity for young people to consider how they might react when faced with a certain situation that they have not yet faced but may quite likely be confronted with.
The activity promotes group discussion and participation and the length of the activity can be tailored to the time available e.g. if only 15 minutes discussion time is available, 1 or 2 scenarios may be discussed. If an hour is available, 4 or 5 scenarios could be discussed.
Suggested Uses
Using scenarios can be used to assess both awareness and accurate knowledge of support services and access to support from family or friends. The activity is also useful in a peer education context where young people learn by listening to their peers’ experiences.
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