Cuolo Village Representative

From Peacebuilding

Activity: Too Many People To Deal With?

Handout 1: Cuolo Village Representative

The situation

A year ago Caritas Abba started working in the district of Bubba, with the aim of supporting rural villages via an agricultural project. The district comprises several poor villages whose economy is mainly based on crops and livestock. In order to design their programme and understand how they could help, Caritas staff carried out field trips and surveys over several months.

However, it seems there have been few results. Yesterday you attended a meeting with representatives from the other four villages. The Caritas representative said that they planned to support five villages in the district: Cuolo (the village you represent); Dale; Ergo; Fargo; and Gromit. The problem is that these Caritas guys seem unable to decide how to support you and the other villages.

Caritas has handed out a list of goods that are ready for distribution, but they don’t want to decide who will get what. The items include:

• 1 ton of fertiliser

• 400 kg of red hot chilli pepper seeds

• 400 kg of pumpkin seeds

• 500 kg of best quality corn seed

• 50 apple trees

• 1 large 800 hp Fiat tractor

• 4 Lamborghini 50 hp power cultivators

• 2 Mitsubishi vans for transporting people or goods

• 60 pregnant cows

• 3 bulls

• 50 sheep

• A milk pasteurisation unit.

The Caritas representative has said she wants us (the village representatives) to decide how to distribute the goods among ourselves, with only one condition: each item on the list cannot be divided between different villages (e.g. 500 kg of corn can be assigned to one village only and may not be divided among two or more villages). If you and the representatives of the other four villages cannot reach unanimous agreement, Caritas will sell the goods on the free market at whatever price it feels reasonable, donate half the money to a charity organisation from another district and distribute the remainder in equal parts to the five villages. Your interests

Your village, Cuolo, mainly has mountainous land. Most families breed livestock and produce dairy products for sale on the dairy market. Some families grow crops, mainly deriving from vegetable gardens and orchards. You are interested in obtaining livestock for breeding (especially the bulls and cows); the milk pasteurisation unit; and the two Mitsubishi vans (useful for transporting goods and people to the city market). Red hot chilli peppers seeds and apple trees would also be needed.

To help you decide what you want – with a total of 100 points – you have assigned:

• 25 points for the pregnant cows

• 10 points for the bulls

• 10 points for the sheep

• 15 points for the milk pasteurisation unit

• 25 points for the Mitsubishi vans

• 5 points for the chilli pepper seeds

• 10 points for the apple trees.

You cannot reveal the above information to other village representatives. You can tell them what’s most important for you and what you want, but not how many points you have assigned to each item.

Your bottom line

Try to get as close as possible to obtaining everything you need. In any case, you will only vote for a proposal that is worth at least 30 of the points you have assigned to the above items.

The scoring system

Your score will be calculated on the basis of the points you have assigned to the above items. In addition, you will get five extra points for any other item you obtain that was not originally among your interests.