Leadership Workshop
Tarabling Institute
23rd – 24th April 2016
Empowering the Vision Project held a two-day leadership workshop for Class XII students of TCV Selakui and STS Poanta Sahib at Tarabling Institute. The workshop was primarily structured and themed around goal setting, identifying career aspirations and exploring the creativity of the students through the arts, followed by creative expression presentations by the students at the end of the day. Both days of the workshop started with an early morning 45-minute yoga sessions led by ENVISION staff members.
Students were divided into three groups, with an equal number of students and a good mix of gender from both TCV Selakui and STS Poanta School . The first day of the workshop focused on exploring the creativity of the students through theatre, creative writing and art facilitated by Theatre activists Jaya Iyer and Zubair Idrisi, Poet/Author Bhuchung D. Sonam, and emerging artist Gyurmey Dorjee. Each group had students with interests in one of the three fields of creativity. All students participated enthusiastically in their respective groups.
Each of the group initially started with an informal discussion where students, shared their personal stories and challenges, discussed their respective interests and careers, and the facilitators responded to queries from the students.
Bhuchung D Sonam explained the importance of narratives, especially the art of storytelling and its importance. He emphasized, “he who controls our narrative controls us”. Students were divided into groups of four to compose poems and were invited to share, appreciate and critique each other’s poems. As part of the creative writing process, he encouraged students to explore and nurture their own creativity, saying that art and creativity have no death and are intrinsic to our own continuous journey.
Tenzin Gyurmey described the art of drawing and the inspirations/influences that led him to explore this art form. Guiding the students in drawing their own portraits on canvas, he took them along a path of self-reflection, urging them to explore who they are, not the physical face but the real ‘Me’ and to draw that in their self-portrait.
Jaya Iyer and Zubair Idrisi with their thespian skills and experience, engaged students to express through acting – skits, drama, short plays, and games. The duo organized ice breaking games, peer introduction sessions, and trust building activities for the students in order to create an atmosphere wherein they could express themselves to the fullest.
Second and the last day of the leadership workshop was on career aspirations. The morning session on Goal Setting was led by Mr.Vikram Dutt, Chief Advisor for ENVISION’s mentoring programme. Mr. Vikram explained the importance of setting goals in life and how committed one should be to achieve these goals. He explained, “no matter how small or big the goals are, one should never compromise hard work”. He noted too that it is important to have more than one goal on your priority list. Mr. Krishna Singh, retired Forest Officer of Madhya Pradesh and his wife and Principal of Delhi Public School, Uttarakhand Branch participa
ted in the session too.
Mr. Vikram’s presentation was followed by an interactive session on Identifying Career Aspirations of the students led by ENVISION’s school mentors Manu Sabharwal, Stevie Phuntsog and Rachit Gupta along with Mr. Vikarm Dutt. The mentors were very sensitive and enthusiastic in their assistance to help students recognize their own personal interests and corresponding goals in life. Many of the students were beaming with confidence and hope after these sessions. In one of the groups, students themselves identified the topic of discussion for the next mentoring session as understanding work ethics.
The workshop concluded with ENVISION’s “Let’s Make a Difference” session, wherein students shared their commitment to making a difference by practising some of the learnings from the leadership workshop, using the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound) criteria. Their commitment ranged from personal such as maintaining daily journals, reading a book a week, daily yoga and meditation to social commitment such as helping juniors with homework, closing all open water taps and saving electricity. Students candidly and openly spoke on how the leadership workshop helped them in building their confidence and aspirations for different careers in future.
Empowering the Vision has been encouraged by the strong ownership of participating schools and students in making this Leadership Workshop a success.Envision will ensure more such activities and workshops are organised in the future toward building confident, smart and compassionate Tibetan leaders.