What Others Say about RQP

What happpens when people learn to focus sharply on decisions and ask their own questions?  Evaluations of RQP’s strategy consistently show that they quickly lead to transformational changes in people’s ability to think and act on their own behalf. A staff member of an agency that teaches RQP methods to the people with whom they work in California described the methods to a national audience as “brilliantly simple.’ Her comments have been echoed by countless others, many of whom have also made a comment similar to this one from a community organizer in Canada: “I wish I had known about this years ago when I first started working.” Or, as a participant in RQP’s featured presentation to the Askwith Forum at the Harvard Graduate School of Education wrote: “Why doesn’t the whole world know this? It boggles the mind!”

Professor Martha Minow, of Harvard Law School and a member of the RQP National Advisory Board, talked about RQP in the Justine Wise Polier Memorial Lecture in 2001. She lauded the efforts of RQP not only because it prepares people “to advocate, to participate in decision-making processes and to hold decision-makers accountable,” but also because the work of RQP is about meeting “people where they are.” Professor Minow captured how the value of RQP’s methods begins with Self-Advocacy.

They don’t have to depend on me or others to speak for them, using RQP they can do that for themselves, they speak for themselves, they find their own voice. RQP allows people who don’t usually speak up to find their own voice.
–Faye Kennedy, The Center for Collaborative Planning Sacramento, CA

Nancy Rodriguez, who was one of our original inspirations when we began our work in Lawrence, MA, observed after leading a community-wide effort to restore bus transportation for all students:
For too long, we’ve been asleep. We’d get our [welfare] check and just hope that we’d have enough to feed our kids and buy them some clothes. Then, we’d go home and think that nothing that’s happening out there matters to us. But now that I’ve started to ask some questions I see that we really need to start paying attention.

The value of RQP’s methods keeps growing as people like Nancy Rodriguez discover decisions on many levels.
The experiences people gain in self-advocacy, and their new ability to uncover decisions being made that affect them provides a strong foundation for effecting change in institutions and systems and democracy.
 

Recognizing that the genius of democracy is in its roots, The Right Question Project sets about strengthening those roots. By helping people learn how to help themselves, the project makes possible the vital process of converting residents into effective citizens... The project offers the possibility of strengthening the vital core of our society. Bill Kovach, former editor of the Atlanta Constitution and Curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalists at Harvard University and current Co-Chair of the Committee of Concerned Journalists.

There are important lessons about the value of RQP methods that emerge from the wide range of applications. This was eloquently articulated by a social service provider and aide to a Member of Parliament from Toronto, Canada, who, after sharing both RQP methods and the vision of Microdemocracywith new immigrants, commented:

We live in a democratic society and it is possible for us, for all of us, for everyone to have some influence but it’s a matter of just getting involved. [RQP] is a way for people to represent themselves, and to deal with government agencies, and to be able to achieve something.

Clients, parents, community residents, potential voters

They used to tell me to jump and I’d say ‘how high. Now, I ask ‘why?’
Welfare client in New Hampshire

“After I started to ask questions, I could just see the look on their faces, ‘how’dyou get so smart?”
Parent of school child in Kentucky

Now, when I go to meetings where people are making decisions that really affect my family, I don’t have to just sit there, not knowing what to say. I think about what I want to know and what I need to know and then I ask the question. What a difference! Resident of the Big Island of Hawaii, one of many laid-off sugar cane plantation workers who used RQP to participate in decision-making processes affecting them.

I didn’t know I could ask questions at the school. But, by doing that, I was able to get my son the services he needs. - Homeless shelter resident in Massachusetts who learned to advocate for her hearing impaired son and secured an Individual Education Plan that met his needs

“[before I learned RQP] I had no back bone and I learned how to ask questions, when to ask it, how to ask it at the right time. And I got places with it…Before I would just say, kind of like just leave it in God’s hands and whatever happens, happens… and this class taught me what questions to ask and when to ask them…I’ve got more guts to speak up for myself. Before I had doormat written across my forehead.”
[New Hampshire Department of Children, Youth and Families: Impact of Family Empowerment Group on Clients]

“I feel more confident [about voting now]. I think how the president decision affect me.”

“I will definitelt [sic] vote this year and the rest to come so maybe I can benefit out of the whole voteing [sic] system”

“I learned “what types of questions I should ask about before voting, and what choices will I make when voting for the right person to run our country”

“Now I really want to vote cause I didn't know our voting different will make”. “I feel that I will vote this year for the first time.”

Participants in the 2004 RQP Voter Initiative

Elected officials

Many years ago I came across a fledgling non-profit group called "The Right Question Project." Their goal was to help low-income parents secure a better education for their children. They decided the starting point was helping the parents to do one singular thing: formulate the right questions…Making our government work smarter begins by asking the right questions… It is important to remember that when we ask questions It’s not about finding fault or assigning blame. It’s about accountability and good government, no more, no less.
Sam Yoon, Boston City Councilor At Large

We live in a democratic society and it is possible for us, for all of us, for everyone to have some influence but it’s a matter of just getting involved…[RQP] is a way for people to represent themselves, and to deal with government agencies, and to be able to achieve something. - Immigrant Social Service Provider and Aide to a Member of Parliament, Toronto

School, human services workers, program directors
RQP provided…the methodology for imparting advocacy skills to parents. - NH Department of Health and Human Services Fact Sheet, March 2000

I want our parents to be asking questions about their children’s learning. I want them to hold us accountable. We’ll benefit and so will their kids. - Theresa Jensen, Principal, Engelhard Elementary School, Louisville, KY

The RQP Strategy is the best way to work with the population of adult learners in our programs. RQP has figured out a way to do voter education so that it is more about investing in adult learners’ ability to think for themselves than just about getting people to vote. The result is adult learners who are more likely to vote. They also learn skills that actually can help them with their classroom work and then, on top of that, they learn to better advocate for themselves when dealing with lots of other systems and services. It is quite a remarkable combination - Art Ellison, Director of New Hampshire’s Adult Education System

Adult learners who had access to the RQP Strategy continued to be active, long after election day, in trying to have a say in decisions on a local and state level. They also were more effective advocates for themselves and for their families. The RQP Strategy gave them a set of tools that they continue to use in many situations. Ami Magisos, the coordinator of the Civics program in Arizona Adult Education

Journalists
The prospect that more poor parents could fend for their kids, and then leap to the big questions, thus broadening the whole town’s policy debate, is tantalizing. Mere fantasy? I invite skeptics to check out, as I did…the parent empowerment work of Theresa Jensen [and The Right Question Project] - Bob Garrett, Columnist, The Louisville(KY) Courier-Journal, August 24, 1997

The Right Question Project sets about helping people learn how to help themselves, making possible the vital process of converting residents into effective citizens. - Bill Kovach, Chair, Committee for Concerned Journalists

National policy experts
One impressive effort, called The Right Question Project… prepares parents to advocate, to participate in decision-making processes and to hold decision-makers accountable…What I appreciate about The Right Question Project is its effort to meet parents where they are. Equally important is its recognition that no system, no professionals, no individual dealing daily with large numbers of people can meet all their needs without the avid involvement of those whose needs are to be met... - Professor Martha Minow of Harvard Law School, in The Justine Wise Polier Memorial Lecture: In the Meantime: The Gap Between Promises and Realities for Kids, February 2001

International Democracy Activists
Beyond the organizational and institutional level, we have seen our strategies stimulate new ways to think about how to engage traditionally disengaged people in efforts to make democracy work better both in this country and abroad. Recently, RQP's strategies began crossing borders, as pro-democracy activists in Eastern Europe, Russia and South Africa looked for ways to enhance their democratization efforts.

• Staff from a Non-Governmental Organization in Moscow, Russia visited the United States and met with some leading non-profits all around this country doing the "work of democracy" in various ways. They spent one afternoon with us, participated in some of the educational exercises we've designed and went away determined to find ways to share what they had learned with people with whom they are working in Russia. Last month, we heard back from them that, of all the organizations they had visited in the United States, they felt that The Right Question Project's educational strategies could be the most effective tool to help build democracy on a grassroots level in Russia. They are now seeking funds to increase their capacity to use RQP in their work.

• In South Africa, a staff person from the Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (IDASA) wrote us about work she was doing to set up an organization for abused women in the Pretoria area:
Their progress... was being hindered by not seeing their mission clearly. I applied RQP at a workshop facilitated to assist them in setting realistic objectives... By going through the process of brainstorming questions, prioritizing, brainstorming again and prioritizing, the women developed very positive action-oriented objectives. It was a very empowering experience for everyone at the workshop, the group felt that they had grown and were now able to focus on the task of doing. One person said that they had developed more in one day than they had in the first eight months since their group first started.

• IDASA also used RQP in a leadership development course for civil society leaders in KwaZulu Natal province that resulted in a very rich and comprehensive definition of civil society leadership, how leaders of civil society organizations related to the community they serve, local government and traditional Leadership.

RQP's educational strategies unleash great energy, innovative thinking and powerful actions. The potential for greater impact is enormous, for our educational strategies depend upon and develop the many still untapped human resources around the world. As our friend from South Africa wrote: I believe this methodology has so many possibilities. I like the flexibility it provides and the authenticity it allows in coming to decisions...