Investor role-playing is a participatory activity where participants take on the role of investors tasked with evaluating, prioritizing, and allocating resources to various proposals or projects. This approach promotes critical analysis, debate, and strategic decision-making in a collaborative and engaging setting.
Preparation
- Define the objective: Decide which proposals or projects will be evaluated (e.g., community initiatives, innovative ideas, educational activities).
- Prepare the proposals:
- Each proposal should include a brief description, objectives, expected impact, and approximate costs.
- Optional: assign a group to present each proposal.
- Distribute symbolic resources: Prepare tokens, coins, or any item to represent the budget available for the investors.
- Design the space:
- Create “booths” for each proposal (tables, posters, or digital platforms).
- Optional: use visuals or materials to enhance the presentations.
Step-by-step instructions
- Introduction to the activity
- Explain the purpose of the exercise and how participants will simulate the role of investors.
- Define the rules for resource allocation, such as:
- Each investor has a limited budget.
- Resources must be distributed among multiple proposals.
- Proposal presentations
- Allocate time for each proposal to be presented by its group or representative.
- Encourage investors to take notes, ask questions, and reflect on each project.
- Analysis and debate
- Provide a space for investors to discuss the proposals among themselves.
- Facilitate dialogue with guiding questions:
- Which proposals have the greatest impact?
- Which are the most feasible?
- What risks or challenges do they face?
- Resource allocation
- Investors allocate their budget among the proposals they consider the highest priority.
- Each investor can assign more resources to proposals they find most valuable.
- Review results
- Calculate and present the total resources allocated to each proposal.
- Reflect with the group on the outcomes:
- Which proposals received the most resources and why?
- What would participants change if the exercise were repeated?
- Closing and learning
- Facilitate a final discussion on the lessons learned from the exercise.
- Summarize how the activity could be applied to real-world resource allocation contexts.
