"All the groups were extremely engaged and discussed the depths of the conflicts that they cared about. By designing a program for this conflict, they were taking steps toward resolving it."
We recently posted two blogs about the Uniting for Peace Youth Festival, which took place at the Mahindra United Work College in Pune, India (MUWCI) from November 27th - 29th. There, several of our trainers and facilitators offered PFP sessions to over 100 participants from diverse religions and ethnicities. One of our lovely facilitators, Aditya Vaishampayan, has been keeping us informed of the structure and result of the festival. In our final blog on the event, Aditya shares a story about his participation at the festival. Enjoy!
"One of the sessions that I think was extremely positive and well received was the final one that I participated in. We conducted many sessions, but the general flow of the workshops was as follows: first, we offered an experience of play, we spoke about the core values that make this play experience powerful, and then we played some more games to contextualize the three themes that we delved deeper into. These were: Play for Peace in education and schooling, PFP in social exclusion, and PFP in youth development. After all of this play and discussion came the last session – ‘Designing a Play for Peace program for your community’. About 15 people signed up for it at the beginning of the conference and a total of 50 people turned up for the session! The session began with a play session and the energy of 50 people was amazing to experience. There were people from at least 20-25 countries in this group.
The goal of the session was for all of these people to leave the session with a rough plan and a fair idea of the steps that go into planning a PFP program. I was leading this particular workshop. I was initially worried about what this session would be like since the diversity of the group was immense and I wanted to make it meaningful for as many participants as possible. To begin with, participants were asked to chat and then form groups based on the similarities of conflict that they deal with in their daily lives. We formed 8 groups of 5-7 members each. Some groups decided to apply the concepts of the program to classroom conflict, some to community conflict, some to individual family conflict, and some to LGBT. Others had youth development in mind. They were carefully taken through the model of a 5D program design. Each of the participants was allowed to think about an audience that they would work with.
All of the groups discussed and came up with a scenario, either a real or a probable one. I then shared the five steps: Diagnosing the conflict, Designing the program, Delivering what was designed, Debriefing the experience for learning, and, finally, Detaching with the group. It was a lot of information, and I was skeptical whether or not each group would be able to grasp these steps. What happened was extremely encouraging. Each group came up with beautiful questions that helped me personalize the planning for them. Moreover, it was evident that the groups had absorbed a lot from the previous sessions. There was one group from MUWCI called ‘Kriya’ who worked with the local youth and I was able to build their understanding and give them some input, which they expressed helped them in concrete ways.
There was another group of participants who worked with Teach For India, who asked wonderful questions to make it meaningful for them. All the groups were extremely engaged and discussed the depths of the conflicts that they cared about. By designing a program for this conflict, they were taking steps toward resolving it. Even after the session was over, one of the groups organized an extended meeting with me to discuss some application-based questions in detail. It felt like I made a difference. It felt like I reached out to many participants and I could sense this in their excitement about the session and the fact that they were going home with a concrete Play for Peace program plan with them. It was a wonderful feeling of fulfillment."
Thank you, Aditya, for engaging the participants at this festival!
