The project's title was "Let's meet for a cup of tea or coffee", don't think that's superficial. During the project I have come to understand that these projects aim at getting participants to know about each other's countries, and to get them to respect diversity and realize there are many different "right" ways to do something. The theme is just one side of the big story.
And to that end the project was a major success. In just 10 days
I became acquainted with 5 different cultures, I learned about each country's history, language, food, drinks, economy, and more significantly made friends from each and every country.
The 10 days were almost a sensory overload. I'd tasted lots of lithuanian, jordanian , maltese, and polish food. I even had a full italian dinner made by italian chefs (the participants) with all italian ingredients. Simply stunning. I'd tasted tea and coffee from each country, tried polish vodka, lithaunian beer and vodka, maltese and italian wine. And this is only the "tasty" part of things.
The first day's programme had lots of "ice-breakers" and "name-games", these are basically fun ways to get to know each other and break the ice. One such novel idea that was so much fun was for each participant to write their name on a paper. Music then played and everybody dances around exchanging papers. When the music stops, you're asked to look for the person whose paper you're holding in your hands and then draw their hair. When everybody is done, another round of music plays, and everyone exchanges papers multiple times, until the music stops and you're asked to draw the eyes of the person whose paper you're currently holding. So now each paper has hair and eyes each drawn by a different person. Another round continues and you're asked to draw the nose, then the mouth, then the neck, etc. until you have a portrait for each person drawn by a handful of different people. We laugh at the outcome, hang the papers on the wall, and in what almost seems like a side effect, each participant now knows the names of 5 or 6 people whose papers he'd had at various stages of the game.
Fun, useful, and very novel.
Exchanging papers during the game
Look at the wall for the outcome of the drawing game
The first day also had so many other games created for letting everybody get to know each other, and to know about each participant's expectations and fears of the project as well. These were to be evaluated by the end of the project to see what expectations were fullfilled and what fears proved to be unneeded.
A typical day's programme would consist of breakfast at 9am, and then off at 10 for some energizers, which are small games we all play together to wake up and get everybody energized for the rest of the day. The rest of the programme would have what I call "educative" games. These are so much fun that you just go on about them thinking it's just a game. But when it's over and you think about it, you find out that you've learnt at least a lesson or two about different cultures and how they interact.
A sample of such a game would be one where we were randomly divided into groups, and then given a piece of paper and a pen, asked to draw how the dining table looked like back at home when we're having a meal together. Each group had participants from several countries. Everyone drew and then we were asked to meet with our groups and discuss the drawings trying to factor out a list of the common things between us and another one with the different things we couldn't agree on.
Sounds simple? try it with people from 6 different countries and you can never expect the outcome. It's just enlightning. Even at this micro-level of things, you come to appreciate diversity. I have always appreciated diversity, but it has never been so obvious to me and I never got to "experience" it like this. To talk about diversity is one thing, and to get in touch with it and experience it is a whole other issue.
Participants drawing how the scene looks when the family gathers for a meal.
Explaining each group's understanding of the common and different things between each of the group member's families.
Once again it's getting too long, so there it goes, Part II.
The following few days should see a few more parts coming out as well. There is still so much to tell and so many lessons learnt.
See you tomorrow :)
2 comments:
It is rather surprising, we seem to be crossing paths more than once by complete coincidence :)
This world is indeed small.
And your blog's message is definitely one of the most important.
Maybe we could meet in real life in a group outing, I will tell Rifa3i, I would love to meet you in person if you don't mind :)
Christian, thanks for your sharing. i never experience what people feel and what they think after the end of project. you remember my whish was to have secret video at the home of some participants. and youmade my dream come true. i never experience this. thanks for finding time to remind things for us and to share with others.
rasa
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