An enriching youth expereince as a facilitator (section 2)

We all arrived at Mr. Hemapala’s house on Saturday evening, a day prior to the workshop. The Batticaloa and Vahamalgollawa youth warmly welcomed us to the group with beautiful lotus flowers. Lavarias and a sweet cup of tea were served that helped us to relieve the lost spirits after a long tiresome journey. After managing to sit with all groups to learn about their experiences in coming to a village for the first time and the challenges they faced on their way, our team’s eldest brother Vasanth moved into the center of the garden and invited all youth groups to form a large circle. At a glance we realized that this was going to be a difficult task due to the large number of participants, however, with the support of all CPBR staff and the villagers, the impossible task was made possible. We all looked at each other for the first time, for some it was the first time they had ever planned of staying with a youth member from a different religious and ethnic background for three consecutive days under one roof. For some, it was the first time to ever step out of their homes. Vasanth greeted the group with a warm smile and shared what to look for during the next three days at the workshop and thanked the villagers and Mr. Hemapala briefly for supporting CPBR to set up the backdrop for a workshop of this caliber for the first time in their village. He invited Mr, Hemapala to share a few thoughts and he shared how he feels happy

and privileged to organize a workshop of this nature in their village that creates history, but also a platform for youth from diverse backgrounds to come together to share and learn from each other. He spoke his heart by sharing how he looks at each individual as his own sons and daughters irrespective of differences, but is willing to support the group to be able to reach great heights. Everyone was touched by what he spoke of that day, Vasanath then opened the floor for the three facilitators- Om, Trudy and Tom to introduce them to the youth group. Om and Tom invited the youth to welcome each other to the workshop, while shouting out their names loud and the others were asked to welcome him by saying “welcome Mahesh”. Then Om shared how they are looking forward to encouraging them, giving them hope and confidence for a better future, and learning from them as well. Tom encouraged them to take a moment to think about the species in the environment that had created space for us and thank them for their care and contribution to our wellbeing. The translations were done by Mazia from Sinhala to Tamil and Bhagya from English to Sinhala. Food is what keeps all of us grounded. Eating well and cooking homemade meals with fresh garden vegetables is perhaps the source of biggest satisfaction in anyone’s life. In that sense, growing one’s own food has become one of the most important priorities in one’s life was what I felt when I saw Mr. Hemapala. As we were all tired we moved back into the designated places after dinner to help ourselves to sleep after a very tired day

Gardening is a wonderful combination of all of the things I cherish — cooperating with others, spending time outside, producing something extremely useful (and delicious), and nourishing myself and my friends. Learning how to grow food responsibly and organically has been wonderful, and my interest continues to expand into other realms of food production — raising chickens, beekeeping, permaculture, etc.

During the growing season, there is a certain feeling in the air as my community mates are busy digging in the dirt, sharing gardening tips, and sharing the bounty of our soil.

The next day was a bright morning, we all woke up to the chirpy birds singing and hustle bustle of trees. Every one had plenty of time to have their own quiet morning

We divided our working days according to the schedule below:

23 June:

On this day our activities were based on introductory games that taught how to build trust, initiate dialogue, take leadership and conflict resolution. One game was to get into pairs and blindfold one participant and the other to lead him. The person who was blindfolded will be directed by the other to use his senses to understand and get connected with the environment around him. They are not allowed to talk to each other, instead they hold each other and the one whose eyes are open takes the initiative to show the way to the other. It was believed by all that it built trust, confidence, deepened the relationship with the partner, and understand the beauty of the environment. Everyone was encouraged to share their experiences. Daniel shared how he learnt to enjoy the beauty of living and nonliving things that he takes for granted by using his senses, while Steve shared how he realized that you don’t need eyes to enjoy the beauty of the environment, and how blind people make an effort to get closer to the environment.

All youth participants learnt to understand the movement of the environment and its’ contribution. They were encouraged to play roles of living things as the earth, sea, wind and try to show its’ activity on human beings both positive and negative. E.g. Wind provides cool air and blows things away. Some participants stayed in the middle of the circle, while the majority formed the circle. The ones around the circle behaved like the wind and try to blow the living creatures away from the earth. This proved to us how the environment can respond to us negatively if we don’t take steps to take care of it. Youth were divided into home groups of five based on the animals they like. They were asked to act out the animal being a part of it’s’ body parts and being one body. This session was entertaining and the home groups were Giraff, Peacock 1 & 2, Cat, Elephant and Hen.

After naming groups, they were allocated tasks under following sub categories:

Time keeping- To make a note on the time

Heart Keeping- To understand and identify those who need help

Toilet keeping- To keep the bathrooms clean

Classroom- To take care of all logistics in the classroom

Catch-Up- To summarize day’s proceedings

Since we expected to celebrate the important Buddhist festival Poson by going to Anuradhapura with the team to watch its’ celebrations, in order to encourage the cross-cultural understandings. As consequences, we could observe that students seemed to respect the celebration of Vesak. In addition to that, we were able to see how attached they were to the Sinhala students from of our team and their friendly and respectable attitudes towards them at the end of the exposure visit. It was a little disappointing for the facilitators as they could not complete their lesson plans set for the day as the session came to an end by evening.

It was beautiful to see the elders of the community cooking and holding space for the youth to come together and voice their concerns for their communities. This is so important for not only peace building work but also for sustainability and ensuring there is a sustainable future for the younger generations says Trudy. The wisdom of the elders is so vital in order to ensure culture, traditions and knowledge gets passed on from generation to generation. This was very evident to us in most activities carried out by them in preparing meals to gardening

24 June:

The day started off with stretching exercise and yoga. Interested youth were present during the sessions conducted by Trudy. The workshop included a few trust-building games, a free art session and some other group activities such as learning a new African song that stimulated the young minds and body a great deal. The workshop went on till 9 in the night, with a few breaks in between the sessions.

We discussed the importance of identifying environmental issues that affected us individually, community and as a whole and what would happen to us in future if we did not initiate

change. The youth were introduced to a process of thinking about the kind of pollution that was happening by meditating and reflecting on it while walking around the space. Then they were asked to think individually, and then move into groups and discuss issues that affect the community, village and them. Mr. Hemapala was invited to share his work and life style in a sustainable environment. He shared some solid information about how he started his career as a farmer and learnt the pollution associated with the use of pesticides and refrained from using them to create competitive advantage for himself, his stake in farming and personal and community development. As a follow- up we did a tour in his paddy fields and herbal gardens, that overwhelmed the participants. Some shared how they would like to come and support Mr. Hemapala with his work in future. Again, having had no gardening experience prior to living in community, I learned all of my current skills in my current setting. Living in community is wonderful for just that — connecting with others, sharing skills and labor, and inspiring one another with our creations.

Photographs were taken and great momentum was seen among the participants after this session. We decided to take some space and meet again after a long break. This session kicked off with a presentation on the eco village. An introduction was given as to what to expect in a village, and what had been discussed so far during the last two days. The youth were happy and we saw that they all had some idea about building a similar model in their community. However, the concept was well presented by the Vahamangollawa and Sirpura group the next day through their action plans. Youth had arranged a talent night where most youth groups performed a dance, song and a musical performance. It was a good performance and everyone enjoyed the campfire. Tom, Trudy and Om were invited to light the campfire and conduct the opening ceremony.

25 June:

After yoga lessons, the youth once again gathered in a circle with their home groups to discuss in detail about the environmental concerns discussed the previous day. Then

hey were asked to sit together with their respective regions and make an action plan. Everyone was focused and specific on what they wanted to do. (Please refer annexures for more details). After a deep discussion for about 45 minutes, the groups were asked to present it in front of the group. Everyone was overjoyed and took deep interest in this activity. Tom and Om gave feed back and made suggestions and applauded them on their efforts. Om shared about how they look at creating a network of young people out of them and creating space for them to intermingle with like-minded youth from other countries and regions. She pointed out how they can send their activities to Trudy and CPBR team and share it across globally and become active change agents in the community. The session came to an end and Trudy, Om and Tom thanked everyone for their contribution. It was followed up by a thank note by Bhagya and Nimal on behalf of CPBR. Tokens of appreciation were handed by Roy, Saman and Nagu to the facilitators and Mr. Hemapala. Everyone thanked for the gifts, while Mr. Hemapala was taken by surprise to see a group picture coming in to his cupboard of souvenirs. He invited his wife to take the gift and this actually spoke of him and his community and their perspectives towards gender sensitivity. Some participants left early as they had to catch their last bus to their home town, while the rest moved into the backyard of Mr. Hemapala’s house to do tree planting. During the tree planting session, we all realized that there is a certain feeling in the air we were all busy digging in the dirt, sharing gardening tips, and sharing the bounty of our soil. Gardening is a wonderful combination of all of the things we cherished. Cooperating with others, spending time outside, producing something extremely useful and nourishing one and others all included. Learning how to grow food responsibly and organically has been wonderful, and our interests continues to expand into other realms of food production - raising chickens, beekeeping, permaculture, etc.

We were all busy packing up bags to leave to our homes. It was sad to leave Mr. Hemapala and the villagers. It was heart breaking.

Conclusion

Through implementing this environmental workshop and facilitating interaction between the two

ethnicities by focusing on specific youth from the Northern. Central, Western, Southern, and Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, 45 of us made a progressive effort towards establishing a social conscious among the two ethnic youth groups for building up an effective environmental and sustainable living building process. The overall themes of the project included team building and the development of skills like cooperation, mutual understanding, time management, adapting to situations, handling unexpected situations, as well as sharing, teaching, and learning.

Many of the original objectives of the project were met with success, while some of them were

unattainable due to the challenges that occurred during the field work. We were able to achieve the objective of an effective interaction between both the Tamil and Sinhala participants and share different cultural values. This interaction enhanced the ability to think beyond ethnic lines and of understanding the acceptance of the people belonging to the two ethnic groups. Moreover, the interaction of the six of us from different ethnic and religious backgrounds served as a positive model and effectively influenced the youth way of thinking. Sameera a youth participant in Wahamangollawa shared how it was his first time to meet friends from the Tamil and Muslim communities and feels fortunate to be a part of this workshop. He also has plans in visiting Batticaloa in the near future. Saman from Siripura has shared about it with his friends back home and they were sad that they could not come for it. Mr. Hemapala and his wife were very upset from the day we left as they had felt that we were all a family and that a member had gone missing. They considered this to be their child. The program was well organized as a result of the support rendered to us by the villagers and Mr. Hemapala and his family. Anoma, Sashini’s mother also helped us a lot in preparing meals and was very upset when we left. Besides, the theoretical and the practical knowledge that we shared with participants helped them and our team to think about their environment as well as understand unity, peace and nationality. We learnt ways to get connected to the environment and think about the species on it which we often take for granted.

Moreover, another primary objective was met with great success: understanding the role of youth

in becoming environmental friendly, the team members’ efforts to understand about being eco- friendly, efficient team work, and the importance of taking care of our mother planet for building a better future. As mentioned earlier, team building was one of the main objectives of the project. We succeeded in the team building effort with the collaboration of all the team members’ hard work and dedication. Creativity, dedication, and the collaborative effort put into the project

work brought about success in terms of our team building goal. Overall, the dynamics and challenges of working within a diverse group offered us the opportunity to learn skills and qualities such as tolerance, understanding, and endurance. Despite the achievements of the objectives of the project, challenges that were faced during the field work included managing the finances, time, and other resources, as well as unexpected situations. Besides that, we faced some administrative and the technical problems in organizing the communication and the

transportation due to budgetary short comes. This gave us the opportunity to learn to

adapt to sudden and unexpected changes. As a primary challenge, many of us encountered the language barrier, which at times prevented us from communicating with each other and the facilitators effectively and very closely. Overcoming the challenges, handling unexpected situations and adapting to the environment or the situation at the moment were important things that we learned throughout the field work. Besides, in working to accomplish the primary objectives of the project we learned about time management and the importance of dividing the work and getting it done in a productive way. We gained leadership experience through handling the responsibilities. In addition, one more significant thing that we learned from this project was how to transcend the ethnic, religious and the cultural boundaries through the interaction with the community through the games and the activities we had during the field work. We learned to face and adapt to the challenges and to overcome them. We were able to learn about our own identities, and help others to learn about their identities as well. Furthermore, we learned about ourselves, and how we should cope up with colleagues and friends who have different viewpoints and ideas. In addition, the guidance and the support from the project advisors helped us to accomplish our goals successfully. Eventually, we succeeded in adapting and maintaining our schedules according to the time frame and we appreciate the support we got from all the members who were part of this project including the CPBR authority and all the administrative support we received.

Eco villages as already discussed here provide a solution for environmental, social, and economic instability by implementing sustainable structures and practices. Thinking very seriously about the threat of peak of global warming, some communities like Wahamangollawa are pioneering alternative lifestyles in order to minimize their impact.I am thankful to have found a home at Wahamangollawa, and encourage anyone with even a passing interest in living off the grid, growing their own food, building a home, farming, or an interest in more general environmental issues to explore the concept of eco village by paying a visit to Mr. Hemapala’s house.