Run a class in 90 minutes
You are not lecturing. The course does the teaching — your job is to get people into a room, keep them moving, and make sure nobody leaves without their councillor's number saved in their phone.
Before the day
- A room, chairs, and 90 minutes. A hall, a garage, a back room — none of this needs to be formal.
- Print the Who do I call? sheet, one per person. This is the item people keep.
- A whiteboard, a flip chart, or just a wall and a marker.
- Ask people to bring a charged phone. Tell them the course costs almost no data and works offline afterwards.
- Find your own ward number and councillor beforehand, so you can demonstrate it live.
- Make a WhatsApp group for the class before anyone arrives.
"This is not about telling you who to vote for. The practice ballot in here uses made-up parties on purpose. This is about how the system works, so you can hold whoever wins to account — including us."
Say it out loud even if it feels unnecessary. It is what lets people bring the course home to their school, their mosque, their church, and their neighbours who disagree with you about everything.
The 90 minutes
Four lessons, not eight. These four pay off immediately; the rest are better done alone afterwards. Timings are deliberately generous — a room that runs over is working.
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 0–10 | Open. The nonpartisan line above. Then go round the room: everyone names one thing broken where they live. Write them on the board. Do not solve any of them yet. |
| 10–25 | Lesson 1 — three governments. Draw the three spheres on the board yourself. Then go back to the list and ask, for each one: national, provincial or local? The room argues. That argument is the lesson. |
| 25–40 | Lesson 2 — who's who. The pattern: you elect a body, the body elects a leader, the leader picks a team. Then the line that wakes people up: "you have never voted for a President." Let them push back. |
| 40–45 | Break. People check phones anyway. Use it to get the WhatsApp group filled. |
| 45–65 | Lesson 3 — the ballots. Phones out. Everyone does the practice ballot at the same time. Then compare: who split their vote, and why? This is the best fifteen minutes in the course. |
| 65–80 | Lesson 7 — getting things done. Hand out the printed call sheet. Take one real problem from the board and walk it up the ladder out loud: call centre, reference number, councillor, MMC. |
| 80–90 | The bit that matters. Everyone looks up their own ward and councillor and saves the number. Nobody leaves until they have. Then: finish the other four lessons at home, and post your certificate in the group. |
Four things to have ready to say
Afterwards
- Post the course link in the WhatsApp group the same day, while it is fresh.
- Ask people to post their certificate in the group when they finish. It pulls the stragglers along better than reminders do.
- One week later, ask one question: "did anyone phone anyone?" Whatever comes back is your next class.
- Ask who would host the next one. The best facilitator in the room is usually someone who was sitting in it.
Not how many attended. How many phone their councillor in the following month. If that number is zero, the class was entertainment. Aim for one real logged complaint with a reference number per class — that is a win you can build on.