[sl/teen] Intern Event Genocide, is it worth it?
So on November 17th , 2008 I ran the event “Genocide it has to end!” To try and raise awareness of whats going on in darfur.
So, when I started the workshop voice went down. So I found it pretty hard to adapt to typing but I found it kind of easy after a while. So when I started the workshop, I asked the participants a few questions about what Genocide was and a couple of other questions just to get some ideas about what they knew. This went down pretty much without a hitch.
After I got through the views on genocide, I moved on to my main task, a RP (role-play) activity involving four groups, each one with a specific link to the genocide in Darfur and each could have a few possible solutions for the problem. I found that I wasn't clear enough with presenting the task and suffered for this later, however the groups that asked me about the task and grasped what I meant had some really amazing discussions on their views of the subject, some of them collided and turned more into a argument rather than a discussion but it was kept under control. Then as I went round group to group asking about the views or possible solutions to the genocide, I was really surprised about how much thought some of the participants had put into their answers, for me this was the highlight of the event as it implied they had read all of the information I had given them and learned a lot of it and became aware of the situation in a lot more detail.
After the RP, I decided to finish the fireside with a few questions that turned into a discussion, again I found this to be really exciting, as a lot of the teens there really started to get involved in their answers, and I had to calm them down so I could move from question to question, but this went pretty smoothly too. It took up a lot more time than I thought that it would but it turned out to be the best activity to get all of the participants involved in.
After running over by about 20 miniutes, the event finally finished and I felt it was a big success as some of the teens that came stayed and continued to debate even though it was over.
On the whole Id say the workshop even with drawbacks like having no voice, went really well for my first attempt. Ive learned to pre-type anything I can think of as it saves time typing during the workshop. And that I need to be A LOT more clear when I'm giving out instructions, even if it means taking extra time so that someone fully grasps what they are doing.
