WEEKLY ACTIVITIES SCHEDULE

Purpose:
This activity will help to identify the routine demands participants have in their daily lives (demands on their time for their own and their families' overall welfare). This activity is done by looking at the typical day or week, from morning to bedtime. This information can help to understand how participants spend their days, the limits on their time, and how much free time they might have available to spend on future project activities. 

Materials:
Personal weekly schedule; weekly group schedule poster (see sample below); flip chart paper, large markers, scissors, tape and tacks. You can also use dirt, sticks, stones, etc. and transcribe the schedule the community creates onto paper to preserve a copy (this is often best with illiterate participants who may not be comfortable with writing tools).   

Instructions:

• Work in small groups.
• Ask participants to think about their typical day or week, and how they spend their time during the year.
• If participants prefer, they may begin by listing their routine activities on their "personal weekly schedule" (see sample below; for literate groups)  
• Or, participants may skip this step and go directly to the "group schedule" and list activities together (effective when working with illiterate groups; represent daily activities by drawing in dirt)  
• Have participants take turns writing down activities on the group schedule.
• Do participant days or weeks look different during different seasons? If there are great differences, participants can create a schedule for the different seasons, or use different colors or symbols for summer, fall, winter or spring.

Sharing Schedules

• Each small group will take a turn and share their results
• How do we understand - what do we notice -about the demands on our time - as individuals and as a group? What do we have in common? What' differences do we see?

Everyone- the Whole Group

• What are the similarities and differences in the individual demands on our time?
• When would be the best times of days for meetings? Training?
• What could we do to reduce some of our existing workloads or the pressures on our time? What did we learn? Is there anything we might do want to do differently now? In the future?

My Personal Weekly Schedule

• Think of a typical week and write your routine activities on the Schedule.
• If it varies by season, you can note this on the Schedule.
• When you are ready, you can join with others and add your activities to the Group Schedule

Weekly Activities Schedule - Template