Activity goal: Encourage collective creativity and equitable participation among all young people, while avoiding the pressure of speaking out loud. Through silent writing and collaborative work, multiple ideas are generated, participants build on each other’s contributions and listening and cooperation skills are strengthened..

Preparation: Explain to the group what brainwriting is. You can use this explanation: “Sometimes, in a brainstorming session, some people talk more while others don’t feel confident enough to participate. Today we’re going to do something different: we’ll write our ideas in silence, and then pass them to someone else to continue or improve them. This way, every voice matters, and together we can build much richer ideas.”

Then give each participant a blank sheet of paper and a pen or pencil. If you prefer, you can use a template with three columns:

Column 1: Initial idea

Column 2: What would you add?

Column 3: Final comments

Start of the activity: Present the question or challenge. Pose a clear question or challenge that is relevant to the group. Examples:

• What could we do to use less water at camp?
• What ideas do we have to improve group harmony?
• What new activities could we propose for the next group day?

It’s essential that everyone works on the same topic.

Implementation:

First round – Silent writing: Each person writes 1 or 2 ideas on their sheet. It can be a solution, a proposal, an improvement, etc. There are no wrong answers. Important: Emphasize that it’s not about writing “perfectly,” but about freely expressing ideas.

Second round: Exchange of sheets: After a few minutes, everyone passes their sheet to someone else (this can be done in a circle or randomly). The new person reads the written idea and adds something new:

Improve the proposal

• Make a variation
• Add a benefit or precaution
• Ask a question to help refine it

Repeat the process about 3 times, until each sheet has been through several hands.

Wrap-up/Debrief: Each participant gets back their original sheet, now enriched with others’ input. Ask them to read what others have written and choose the idea they find most useful or creative. Then, you can invite volunteers to share some of these ideas with the group.

Close with a short group conversation using questions such as:

• What did you think about writing instead of speaking?
• Were you surprised by what others added to your idea?
• What did we learn about working as a team without talking?
• What could we do with all these ideas? How can we turn them into action?

Materials:

• Sheets of paper (1 per participant)
• Pens or pencils
• Timer or clock to manage the time (optional)