Highlighting Resilience, Creating Space for Joy, and Being Mindful of Privilege: Blog Post 3
The presentation with Rachit Shah gave me important insight into factors that may be successful in my own intervention. A point which I found particularly interesting was the mention of the gap between what teachers think is a problem vs what the students think is a problem. As the intervention we will develop for Famconnect will take place in a school setting, I believe that it is important to differentiate between the issues the teachers bring up, and what the students bring up, while taking into account that both are valid. For example, when meeting with the students, a problem that they brought to our attention was not feeling a kinship to talk about issues with peers due to general stigma. While we were aware of stigma, I felt previously unaware that the girls felt uncomfortable to even talk to each other about their issues.
Rachit talks about some ways of “breaking the ice” that I think may be helpful for getting students more comfortable with sharing their experiences. The idea of scenario cards as a way to teach students how to give advice seems like something that would be useful in our setting, as well as being an insightful intervention which meets students where they are and builds their skills. In addition to the scenario cards, I also appreciated the bead idea as a way to have people open up. While I’m not sure the actual beads would be helpful in our context, I do think further icebreakers are useful to consider. We are currently considering an adaptation of group pm+ that would also utilize a card game as a method of catering the students’ own dialogue and an assistance in starting conversations, as well as bringing joy into the space. An aspect of Rachits intervention that I would like to bring into our own is the questions about “what are five things that make you happy” or “what are five strengths you have.” I appreciated these questions as they highlight resilience and joy in conversations that are often triggering.
Wilmi spoke about the concept of drawing from what already exists, which is an important concept, particularly when considering resilience. An example of a factor that already exists in the Famconnect setting is the way students have outlined that they enjoy activities such as dance and sports. With this insight, dance and sports, or physical activity, is something we would like to work into our intervention in order to create a familiar, comfortable, and fun space. Another factor that Wilmi mentioned that I found very valuable, was the fact that people from the west represent a colonial power, which is significant in the context of Kenya. Furthermore, something I would like to constantly remind myself of is the idea of not presuming, being open to learning, and not putting my own perceptions of what I think a community is at the forefront of the conversation. I found the example that Wilmi have of a community not wanting to be labeled as “traumatized” to be incredibly important when considering how an outsider’s perspective may be harmful or disjointed with the community in question, as well as how labels can diminish the whole experience of people.
Image via ChezaCheza mission foundation which provided dance classes, life skill classes, and food to at risk children during the pandemic school closures.
