UWC Short Course Bridging Cultures: 2019, what I learnt from peace education.

As a culmination of my travels around Europe I was selected to facilitate the UWC Short Course Bridging Cultures 2019 (if you don't know what is UWC click here) which took place between the 5th and 15th of August, in Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH). To get a preview of the program check the video posted above!

The idea was to bring 25 young people form different from BiH, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Albania; with the purpose of making them reflect about multiculturalism and social justice. Originally we intended to also have a few students from Kosovo, but because the central government of BiH does not recognize the independence of Kosovo, students with Kosovar passports had to apply for a visa they were unfortunately not granted. We were 7 facilitators and our coordinator from UWC Mostar, all of us from different nationalities and belonging to two very characteristic age groups - the 1990s, and the 2000s. With a diverse group of facilitators and participants we dived into the task.

UWC Mostar, host for the UWC Short Course Bridging Cultures 2019

Me and Rina Cakrani at the reception of the short course in the Mejdan Residence of UWC Mostar.

For ten days, we conducted over 20 workshops (see image below for full schedule), played all sorts of team-building/icebreakers/energizers, dance around with "baby-sharks" and "zip-zap-boings". Through the workshops we uncovered the meaning of culture; learnt how to communicate nonviolently; reflected upon issues of racism, colonialism, and orientalism; discussed how history is made and the problems associated with history-making - which in the Balkans, where each country is writing its own history, is a particularly unique issue. Ultimately, we were hoping that through our workshops these participants could come together, overlook their differences (particularly those inherited across generations), respect each other, and somewhat empathize with one another struggles.

Schedule for UWC Short Course Bridging Cultures 2019 (as shared with participants)

For a lot of people I have met with whom I talk about this program, their first reaction to short course is: ah! Like summer camp. I never went to summer camp so I have zero point of reference, but it seems to work. It is like a very intense summer camp where we bring up and reflect upon questions at the core of our identity. What makes me me, and what makes other other. What does it mean to come from Croatia, Bosnia; what does it mean to be a Serb Bosnian, or a Bosniak Bosnian, or a Croat Bosnian? What does it mean for us to not have Kosovars amongst the group? What are the similarities and differences amongst our language and why that may matter? It is most likely imposible to find answers to these questions in ten days, or maybe even ever, but asking them might already create change. Partially because the answers to these questions are deeply rooted in our individual experience (unique to each one of us in this planet) and then buried under the multiple layers of culture that we have inherited form our parents and mentors. This makes it really hard for us to actually reach a place where we can question what makes me me?.

A group of participants and facilitator Lennart Salej Nejad during the Identity Workshop

So how did we do it?

The challenge of proposing these questions is not to be taken lightly, for the same reasons is hard to find answers in short period of times, is that proposing the questions is hard. One of my professors at College of the Atlantic (COA) once shared in one my classes: teaching is an art-form in two ways, is the art of design for instance in the curriculum development; and the art of performance in the delivery of a lesson. Good education comes from mastering these two arts and applying them to the context of work. With this approach is that I came into the job.

When it comes to the designing the program, going step-by-step uncovering different dimensions of the theme, might be useful. So that students are not overwhelmed about the amount of self-reflection is requested, and the new knowledge shared with them, you can do this by making each day a different theme which has proven to work in the past of this short course. However, in our program we went with a different approach, we went from general themes of communication, history and culture, to more specific sensitive topics; so by the time they reached the workshop on racism, colonialism, and orientalism they already had a framework on how to communicate with one another, and had stepped out of their comfort zone to explore new ways of thinking about controversial issues. When doing recaps of the discussion it was hard at times for students to elaborate on the topics discussed, and I think that having supporting material to watch at night, or to read, could be a helpful way of encouraging them to continue learning about the themes of the workshops in their own time.

While choosing the most appropriate workshops is important, being attentive to the needs of the participants is most relevant and in the planning phase, making sure the schedule has space for changes can be very helpful. Another teacher once told me that in education, one really has to practice non attachment, the educational space is fertile and anything can grow out of it, so things might not go as planned. In this short course which by nature is immersive, the educational space considers all the time student spend throughout the short course: formal and informal, in the school and in the residence, during session and during breaks. Sometimes things that happen at night after dinner, where everyone is hanging out at the common room might give a good idea of something to try out the next day, or a conversation with a participant may alert you of triggers. There were times a workshop that we deemed appropriate at first was no longer appropriate and we had to come up in a few hours with an entire new plan for the afternoon.

The delivery of a workshop, is a second big issue to address. How you you teach, the words you use and the questions you ask are all part of the art of the delivery. Making good probe questions is essential to a good discussion, active listening here is an essential skill, writing down notes as others speak is also very useful to come up with good probes, and understand the participants better. I learnt this from one of our facilitators, his questions were very sharp, almost sharp enough to hurt; but it definitely stimulated discussions. His questions were specific to a theme, to the participant, and more often than not with the intention to challenge participants with their own ideas. He would mention the name of the participant, sometimes some biographical data about them, and then a question related to the workshop.

Lastly, I would like to comment on boundaries. In an immersive program like this one, I think one of the hardest things to do is to keep healthy boundaries between facilitators and participants. Especially when working with participants who are very close to ones own age (in my case it was a bit far but our youngest facilitator was younger than our oldest participant). It is a very fine line to walk through, and finding balance still remains a mystery to me. Beyond ethical responsibilities proper to the job, everybody seems to find a different sweet spot for these boundaries. In this short course, it became clear to me that sometimes it is important to say no to certain conversations the students want to have, specially on topics you do not want to feel responsible for addressing (either because you don't know how to or you feel uncomfortable about it). And for certain others, you need to divert and distract. For others, is important to engage. The limits are yours to put (but make sure you make them clear sooner rather than later cause changing them its hard).

At the forefront of my working ethics, I like to put compassion and empathy. This almost in a George Marshall style using nonviolent communication (NVC) as my default mode for communication with other facilitators, participants and coordinators alike. In addition, in high intensity environments like a UWC Short Course of similar characteristics, or a UN Climate Conference for example, is really easy to become demoralize after moments of crisis and doubt, I had the opportunity to observe it in both spaces this summer. Taking a moment to be compassionate to oneself and seek for perspective is really important. Remember the EASY model for social activism? Taking care of oneself is essential for any kind of program like this, and keep oneself in check sometimes might get challenging. To address this challenge it was very useful to me to create smooth communication paths with the rest of the team. The power of team is very real, and fostering a good team was for us our best sharpened tool, a lot of collaboration and a lot of support.

What exactly was my role?

I did many things. First I would like to highlight that I was the oldest facilitator and aside from other facilitator who had done the short course a year earlier, the only one with any experience in educational programs of this kind. Naturally, I had somewhat of an organized schedule in my head that we could follow to make sure we finalized the program in time for participants to arrive. In addition, I devised a series of skype sessions for us to get to know each other better (which unfortunately was not as effective as I would have hoped for) and do some preparations for when we met. During the first four days of preparation I also kept the schedule going, and made a few attempts to do team-building although that ended up happening naturally better that I could have ever created space for. At the short course I sang a couple of songs at the opening ceremony, facilitated workshops where I highlight the NVC workshop, how's history made, intercultural communication workshop, which are the result of work I have done in the past at COA; I co-designed a workshop on Theatre of the Oppressed (also based on a presentation I did a COA); I also mediated our facilitators meetings, became water boy, played all sorts of games and energizers, sang karaoke, played guitar under Stari Most, and made terrible jokes about fruits. As I said, I did many things. But mostly came in to fill in wherever I saw a gap, or wherever I was asked to fill in.

As the only non-European facilitator of this team, I am incredibly grateful that this community and these groups of people were willing to open up to me. This short course was very relationship focused, at a facilitator and a participant level and I appreciate that being from such foreign lands, I was given the opportunity to immerse myself in the group and become a part of it. I am grateful for participants to be open to mo talking about culture, and for facilitators for following my schedules. There was a lot of learning, and I am excited to continue processing this experience - hopefully to repeat it again soon.

Once again,

Thanks for reading!