By Carmen Opperman
What were the highlights you experienced as a coordinator and facilitator during the Youth Training?
We had rich discussions, especially around their experiences with gender roles. Young people shared their experiences from their homes, for example, one person said “In my house, my father is involved in doing the house chores, so for me, it’s much easier to engage with it. I grew up in a home where there is no role because of the person’s gender.” However, that is very different from the environment he comes from. And he is taking it further. Some of them were talking about how difficult and sometimes impossible it would be to change the much older generation but then the question is how they will approach gender roles. I am hoping for these young men and women to take it further.
I also had this quiet and intelligent young lady and you can see what conservative cultural and religious practices have done to her but then you could see she is coming out and she’s becoming bolder and I’m quite impressed by it.
What changes in behaviour/action have you noticed?
As previously stated, there was a young lady who started opening up more and started engaging and participating more, especially when we were on the topics of gender. Then there were two young men who came to me and asked if I could mentor them beyond the training. I agreed and they went and discovered there was a problem among the altar servers at our church. They went to them to enquire what they could do and they discovered some of the younger ones were being bullied. They carried out a session with the children with 6 of these children and plan on having more engagements with them, other children, and parents because it is part of a larger problem in the community. I’m happy to see they have adapted the approach of finding out what the issues are from the community first.
What has been your key learning from the process?
People have the capacity to do quite a lot. I saw it with the two young men who initiated this engagement with the altar servers themselves and they put a lot of what they learned from the training into how they engage with people-listening to people. One got a teaching job and he is doing fine arts with children but with the understanding that they have their own capacities and gifts and are not empty vessels to come and fill. The other one was doing youth service and he says his approach to leadership has changed to allow others to share their thoughts rather than bring only his voice. One of the participants also saw my garden, inspired by TFT, and he also started one. I realized that if we want to see the impact that we want on the lives of the participants, we must be the living example of this change we are introducing. These young men and women are also equally looking at how I am living what I have facilitated for them.
How do you see the way forward for the Youth Training?
Decentralizing the youth training means that it has reached people who may not have been reached otherwise. With Covid a lot has happened to travel and the economy. Right now, it is more about survival, so it has become very difficult for people to travel to acquire knowledge. The way forward indeed is to sustain the decentralization but not losing the quality of what we do which we can only attain if we keep following up with them. I was hoping we would see clusters of youth (using WhatsApp groups for example) from different countries where young people can exchange ideas and experiences then the office monitors them. Sharing rooms with people from different countries was a big part of my learning experience in South Africa.
