Understanding the daily behavior of the children in the backward community, the Dupree Team came with the idea of teaching kids the fundamentals of reconciliation in daily life through intensive three-day training conducted on 28-30 May 2019. Alisina and I were the facilitators/teachers of this wonderful experience.
This three-day program was taught topic-wise to the kids between 12-16 years of age. Our number of participants was 9 children.
The very first topic was Mediation. When conflicts begin in a school the Afghan kids either join one of the parties of the conflict or step back. They don’t know if intervention is a good idea. Mostly after a conflict is done, the kids don’t talk to each other which traumatizes some of the children.
Through the training, they learned that it is good to talk it out and not to break the relationships.
They also learned that it is good to intervene. But how?
Here is what the kids learned how from Maryam. Maryam who is a 10th grader at school, also a participant of the training shared her experience which helped kids to understand better.
“one evening my mother and my father started a quarrel, that night I decided to ask them to stop fighting.” Said Maryam, “When I approached them, I was worried if they harm me. First I stepped back. Then while being concerned I asked them to at least lower their voice which they did. That was enough to weaken their conflict and finally stop their quarrel by saying they both were right. But before, which I did not intervene, they used to fight even sometimes physically.”
The second day of the training was focused on three creative ways of dealing with conflict. The games and activities helped them to better learn the subject. The three ways were as follows:
Avoiding – one of the parties avoids the conflict due to its consequences.
Compromising – to find a mutual solution that partially satisfies both the parties.
Collaborating – trying to understand each other’s needs in order to find a creative solution instead of focusing on their personal desire.
The third day dealt with the idea of how adults behave with the kids in different places and how to understand their behavior. Afghanistan is among those countries most unsafe for women and girls. Throughout the day they learned what good touch and bad touch are. Learned how to report a person to their parents if the person is trying any “Bad Touch” in school and social climates.
Our ultimate goal is to engage kids to learn from each other and to help them think critically about daily life’s challenges also always to ask themselves questions.
At the end of the training, certificate of participation given to all the 9 participants.
AMBITIOUS TO WITNESS MIRACLES 