Large-group capacitation

[19][20] Capacitation is reminiscent of the adult education concept of conscientization – from the Portuguese conscientização, popularized by Brazilian theorist and activist Paulo Freire.

[21] While Freire's work was translated into English as early as 1970,[22] de Morais' Organization Workshop (OW) – and, hence, moraisean large-group capacitation (LGC) – did not come to the attention of the English-speaking public until the mid-80s, when the Chilean Social Psychologists I.

[32] The UNRISD (Geneva) had started (in the seventies) to promote the term capacitation as a "problem-solving, educational" alternative to the then prevalent but mainly pragmatic 'social amelioration' approaches to International development.

[35][36][37][38] Although de Morais worked for many years with a range of UN and International Agencies, his "Activity"-based[39] pedagogy never became common currency there, possibly, as Sobrado suggests, because of, among others, its then presumed "Evil Empire" pedigree.

[55] The 'locus'[56] of activity-based LGC is the Organization Workshop(OW),[57] a learning event where participants, applying social division of labor principles,[58] master new organizational knowledge and skills through a learning-by-doing approach.

The OW, in a variety of local, regional and national applications, and in different formats,[78] has spread, over the years, to Costa Rica, Mexico, Panamá, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Brazil, the Caribbean, a number of African countries as well as Europe.