Since we have confirmed ourselves that four of us (Nenden, Hayati, Linda, and Kafa) are going to India to attend the International Dialogue, a program organized by Initiatives of Change India from 26th to 31st January 2019, we were asked to give a workshop about Peace Generation at second day. Then we decided to give the 12 Basic of Peace Values, that is about Celebrating diversity and Preventing Violent Extremism.
There were 19 participants who came in our workshop. Those are from Taiwan, South Korea, UK, Peru, Switzerland, Nagaland, Ladakh, Columbia, Kenya, Ghana and India. Most of them were seniors or elders. Despite their age, we were so grateful for their enthusiasm to join our workshop.
Within 90 minutes, we divided into 3 main activities; Introduction about PeaceGeneration, Celebrating Diversity and Boardgame for peace. Introduction about PeaceGeneration was conveyed by Nenden, then Hayati took the role to tell about Celebrating Diversity with one exercise named “Mess my Face”. The participants were split into small group. One group should consist of odd number. Then Hayati asked them some questions which will make them into a smaller group (majority and minority), whose answer are the minority, they would receive a mark in their face. Some questions, one participant will be the minority, some others are part of the majority. Then we asked them how would they feel when they are in majority and in minority, what would they feel when they get the mark from others. This exercise aimed the participants embrace diversity and respect differences.
Move to the last activity, Linda initially spoke about Boardgame for Peace project in Indonesia which was an effort to raising awareness of youth people in Indonesia about violent extremism phenomena and activated them as agent of peace. Idea behind board game message were how critical thinking and empathy became an important aspects to counter violent extremism. Participants took part directly to play the game, consist of 5-6 players for each groups. Nenden, Hayati, Linda and Kafa were the facilitator in each groups. After playing one round which none of the groups won the game, then Kafa debriefed from what happened in the game and wrapped up all the sessions.
We got positive feedbacks from the participants. One of them said that those kind of methods were so relevant to address breaking barrier for youth.
