Satenik
is a 16 year old girl from a remote village in Armenia. At the end of March
2012, she decided to organize mini-GLOW summer school for her peers. Over
thirty high school students signed up to join the after-class seminars.
The topics of the first day of
seminars on March 26th were leadership and gender equality. I thoroughly
planned the session and had a few energizers to warm up the group. As in our
school we are not used to interactive activities to promote learning, my
session was very different yet engaging and interesting for the participants. After
each activity we were debriefing and taking the learning points. During
leadership session we discussed what the qualities of a leader are and lots of
opinions and characteristics came up.
We continued with gender
equality. It was very good to have gender balance in the group. Boys were
particularly active in this session. One of the activities was on what they
consider suitable professions for men and women. A very heated and energetic
discussion followed where we had lots of different opinions. This allowed
everyone to see different perspectives on very simple topics.
Next day we continued with topics
of trafficking and gender stereotypes. First I asked the participants what they
know about trafficking. There was some response in the group. Then I shared
what I learnt about the issue during GLOW and after it. We watched two videos on
trafficking – one on trafficking as a phenomenon and various types of
trafficking and second one was on child trafficking. The movies brought up lots
of questions and we discussed them afterwards.
Gender stereotypes were the next
session. We brainstormed what is a stereotype and then I read for them some of
commonly spread stereotypes of our society. The opinions of the participants
were very diverse, some of them brought examples of gender stereotypes, their
influence and consequence on lives of individuals.
The last day of seminars we covered
domestic violence and volunteerism. We watched a movie about domestic violence
followed with opinion sharing in a circle. Some of the participants shared
cases of domestic violence they knew and the approach and opinion of society to
this phenomenon. I think our group was well aware of the issue and had strong
understanding how important it is to fight against it in order to have a
healthy society.
Volunteerism was the last topic. I
wanted the participants to remember this topic and to get a better sense of
what volunteerism is and be interested to be one. In our session some
participants were skeptical saying that it is unappreciated work, that no one will
do something without any expectations. However, we had quite many students who
shared examples and hopefully influenced the others. I also told the students
about different projects and organizations that could be useful for study
abroad projects, shelter for domestic violence, etc. The most active 10
students got books on domestic violence.
I am very pleased with the
results of the seminars. They not only increased knowledge on the topics among
my peers, but also gave me confidence and satisfaction that I can independently
organize seminars and share my knowledge.
Satenik Kalantaryan
Village of Chinary, Tavush region
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