In Camptonville, a town of about 650 in the Sierra foothills, a group of mothers on welfare were having a hard time figuring out how to find jobs that would support their families. So they decided to use a discussion method developed by a national organization called the Right Question Project (RQP). One of the moms, Cathy LeBlanc, a single mother of three, had attended RQP training sessions sponsored by the Sierra Health Foundation.

So the women met to discuss the question, "What are our barriers to employment?" This led to another question: "How can education help us?" In that discussion, says LeBlanc, "we found out that many of the moms in our group wanted to continue their education."

So the women contacted Lifetime, a group that helps mothers on welfare get more education. With their help, one of the Camptonville moms realized that, as a child of deaf parents, she had a skill-signing-that could become a career. She's starting a program at Sierra College this summer; two other members of the group are enrolling for the fall.

"We use RQP often," says LeBlanc. Sometimes it's to prepare for meetings with Camptonville's CalWORKs case worker. As in many rural areas, the problems often involve transportation. In one discussion the group focused on the question, "How can we advocate for a car purchase?" One of the mothers needed a car to get to work and had saved $500, but it wasn't enough. The group persuaded the county CalWORKs program to help her buy the car.

Advocating on a larger scale, the group used the Right Question Project method to prepare testimony about welfare policy, which they delivered at a public meeting with their congressperson, U.S. Rep. Wally Herger (R-Yuba County), who chairs the committee handling welfare reform.

The Right Question Project method

RQP workshops, guided by facilitators working from RQP curriculum guides, teach parents how to focus on what they want-and how to ask for what they want-out of a specific meeting or exchange. The assumption is that parents do know what they want to say and what' s best for their children, but can become disempowered in meetings with professionals or officials who have power, formal training, and lots of practice speaking out. RQP gives parents steps-brainstorming, prioritizing, more brainstorming, reprioritizing-to think in a logical manner about issues that are important to them.

LeBlanc learned about RQP two years ago through the Yuba Community Collaborative for Healthy Children, one of 18 local collaboratives in the Sierra Health Foundation's Community Partnerships for Healthy Children (CPHC). "What I like about it the best," says LeBlanc, now an RQP trainer, "is that it helps the average person be on more even footing when speaking to professionals. It allows you to go through a process where you get to think before you speak."

For many people, says Lane Montgomery, communications associate at the Sierra Health Foundation, RQP has "taken away that 'we can't fight City Hall' attitude." Faye Kennedy, of the Center for Collaborative Planning (CCP), which conducts RQP trainings for CPHC collaboratives, says her organization has trained at least 200 parent leaders to use RQP in the last two years. But she suspects its reach is much deeper. Parents leave the workshop with a "cheat sheet" they can take home and refer to for the next challenge they meet.

The RQP at school

Many parents use the RQP method to advocate for their kids in school. Tammy Ghasvarian, a 38-year-old single mother of three, was working as a Vista volunteer in Grass Valley when she participated in an RQP training. A week later later she came home to find out that the principal at her son's school, without consulting her, had referred her son to an agency for treatment of his behavioral problems.

"I wanted to go and choke the principal," says Ghasvarian. But then, she says, she took a deep breath and took herself through the RQP process: What was the most important thing she needed to ask the principal? The bottom line was: "Why was I not informed?"

When Ghasvarian went to see the principal, she says, she calmly reminded him that when they'd talked before, he'd told her they were a team in helping her son. By the end of the meeting, the principal apologized and said it would never happen again. "I earned his respect that day because I was calm, prepared, and smart about it," says Ghasvarian, "Now whenever I walk into his office he's always very attentive and helpful." 

Keys to success

• The Right Question Project is quick, inexpensive, and nonthreatening.
  
  
• Facilitators can lead RQP workshops based on printed guides from RQP.
  
  
• The method can be used on many levels, from an individual parent advocating for their child to groups advocating for social change.
  
  

RQP: The nuts and bolts

The basic RQP training works like this:

1. Parents are given a "problem" to work on-such as a form letter from a school district explaining which school their child will be placed in.
   
   
2. Parents work in small groups to come up with questions, such as "Who made this decision?" "How is school assignment decided?" "Who will my child's teacher be?" The brainstorming should be open and nonjudgmental. Trainers write down all suggestions.
   
   
3. Then, through discussion, the parents narrow down their list of questions to three they consider most important.
   
   
4. Parents meet again in small groups to refine those questions.
   
   
5. In the end, the group decides on a few questions that get to the heart of their concerns, such as "What is the background of the teachers at this school?" "What if I'm not satisfied with the school?" and "How would I go about changing this decision?"
   
   

Right Question Project training

Right Question Project materials:

RQP sells facilitators' guides for single workshops ($30) and a five-workshop series specifically focusing on school issues ($75), as well as other materials. RQP, 617-492-1900, www.rightquestion.org

Experienced trainers:

The Center for Collaborative Planning (CCP) provides trainers who teach the RQP and other organizing and advocacy methods for groups all over California. The CCP sets the price for each organization based on its resources and needs. CCP, 916-498-6960, www.connectccp.org.