Gratitude fountain
Always remember people who have helped you along the way, and don’t forget to lift someone up. ―Roy T. Bennet
👥 Serves: 11-25 people, 2-10 people
🎚 Difficulty: Medium
⏳ Total time: 121-240 minutes
🥣 Ingredients: A quiet place with no distractions, chairs or cushions for participants to sit on
🤓 Wholebeing Domains: Community, Positive Emotion, Radical Care
💪 Wholebeing Skills: Abundance, Acknowledgement, Affirmation, Caring, Celebration, Championing, Giving, Gratitude, Kindness, Relating to Others
Gratitude fountain
📝 Description
A powerful activity to nurture gratefulness in a group.
Many changemakers (and many people in general) struggle with receiving nice words of appreciation for something we have said or done. We tend to shrug it off and focus the attention back on the other. Whilst this altruism is noble, it is important that we learn to receive appreciation because it can boost our self-esteem, life satisfaction, and connection to others.
We experienced the following activity during a ChangemakerXchange summit where Josh Babarinde, a compassionate and inclusive facilitator, guided us through a powerful closing activity to nurture gratefulness in a group. We recommend this activity for teams who want to take their connection to a deeper level, or at the end of particularly powerful trainings or summits where participants connect in a meaningful way.
👣 Steps
Step 1 – Preparation (10’ – in advance)
Find a quiet space and set up chairs or cushions in a circle. If possible and appropriate, do this somewhere in Nature so that the context is more beautiful than a traditional room.
Step 2 – Invite participants (5’)
Gather your participants and ask them to sit in a circle.
Step 3 – Gratitude fountain (75’)
Explain that they will have a chance to share words of gratitude to each other. The way it works is as follows: if someone is ready and willing to receive gratitude, they are to place their hands cupped together with the palms facing upwards. This signals to the group that their “fountain” is open and they are ready to receive words of gratitude. Whenever this person has received enough, they can place their hands on their knees with the palms facing down, signalling their “fountain” is closed. If for some reason someone prefers not to receive any words of appreciation (or at least not from the beginning), they can simply “close their fountain” by placing their hands on their knees with the palms facing down.
Step 4 – Closing (5’)
Thank everyone for opening their fountains to receive gratitude and to offer gratitude to others. Take a few deep breaths together. Now give participants some free time for them to absorb the experience (some of them may need quiet time alone, whereas others might need to talk to someone or write in their journal…).