Clock Buddies

When and Why

Clock Buddies is a quick and easy way to create pairs for future partnered activities that offers a break from continually turning to the person next to them. Buddies will become partners for various activities throughout the engagement. It is well-suited for larger groups (25-250) and longer engagements that take place over the course of several hours or days. It affirms both physical appearance and given names as important markers of identity. As participants locate their “Clock Buddies” in the group there is an opportunity to practice social awareness and develop a sense of belonging.

How to Facilitate

1. Reflect on the current contexts, demographics of participants, and the purpose of the engagement and decide on how many appointment times suit your purposes before making copies of Clock Buddy handout. Unless you need 12 partners, before making copies, indicate on the original handout which ‘hours’ need an appointment partner by circling those numbers.
2. Distribute a handout to each participant and ask them to write their own name at the top of their paper.
3. Instruct participants to stand up with their papers and something to write with and move quietly around the room until you use your attention signal, at which point they should stop and find a nearby partner. You might choose to play music as a move/stop signal.
4. When everyone has a partner, ask them to sign each other’s paper on the 3 o’clock line. It is important that they all start on the same line.
5. Give the signals again to walk around, stop, and find a new partner. Check to be sure everyone has a new partner before you ask participants to sign each other’s papers on the 6 o’clock line. (If there’s an odd number, a facilitator can sign as a partner.)
6. To complete the activity, have partners mingle and pair up for the number of times you’ve decided on for the engagement. For example, if you’ve designated four partner engagement times, they’ll sign on the 9 o’clock line and finally on the 12 o’clock line in the next two rounds. 
7. Ask participants to return to their seats as soon as all of their appointment slots are filled. 
8. Each time you need participants to form pairs during the engagement, have them take out their appointment clocks and announce one of the times to designate their partner for this activity. For example, “Now meet up with the person who is your 9 o’clock appointment to discuss…” Partners will look around the room to connect with one another and greet each other by name before responding to the prompt. 
9. Facilitator tracks which appointment times have been used, as the session progresses. It can be handy to write the partner activity on the appointment time on your copy.

Modification

• You can also use local geographical locations as the points of meeting up (e.g., Lake, Redwood Park, Clock Tower, River) to personalize the experience.
• Instead of a clock, provide a “Travel Partners” handout (see examples below).
• Directions: “Please find the Travel Partner sheet in your folder and notice that it has (fill in the blank) sections. While it’d be great to actually travel there today, we’ll instead be using this as a way to quickly find a partner during our next activities. When I say, “Go,” please find three people not at your table and have each of them sign THEIR name under one of your “Destination” flags, while you sign on THE SAME corresponding box on their sheet. So, if they sign on your Kenya flag, you’ll sign on their Kenya flag. Let’s see if we can do this in less than 2 minutes. As soon as you have a different name in each of your sign-up slots, please have a seat.”
• Facilitator note: If you have an odd number of participants, partner with the “extra” person yourself, or invite them to make a group of 3, depending on the context and timing of that activity.

Examples

• Travel Partners – Cities
• Travel Partners – Flags