“We challenged the participants to develop an attitude where one questions beliefs and practices that we often accept as given.” - Play for Peace trainer Agyat Shunya
Just over eight months ago Play for Peace trainer Javeed Ansari reported on a Play for Peace training session that he held in Pune Kalmadi Secondary School in India. The session was not only a fun experience for the grade eleven students, it was also an opportunity to share ideas and concerns about their environment. Following that session, experienced Play for Peace trainers Agyat Shunya and Swati Bhatt held a session at the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the Savitribai Phule Pune University. Invited by the university, they were asked to conduct a session with the newest group of master's students of communication studies.
In Western culture, training sessions often start with an “ice breaker” to help people get engaged. But not for this session. “At Play for Peace we don't break the ice - we connect, engage, and create an environment for high-quality conversation,” said Agyat. As an example, a day before the session Swati and Agyat discovered that one of the students, Prateek, was visually impaired (blind). As they had done in a recent visit to Yangon Myanmar where they coached the participants on how to modify their games to include the disabled, Swati and Agyat worked with the Pune university trainees to modify the activities so Prateek could join in. “After two days of training, Prateek told us how happy he was and that he felt included,” said Agyat. For the other participants, the training session not only provided an opportunity to understand how one can adapt one’s actions to support those who are disabled but also a chance to discuss social inequalities that we often accept as normal.
According to Agyat, they created opportunities to map the landscape of social realities and perceptions and highlighted the need for equality. “We challenged the participants to develop an attitude where one questions beliefs and practices that we often accept as given.”
