By Ritu Agrawal | Partnership Manager
15 adolescent girls from AIC attended a 3 day leadership retreat on self reflection and introspection to help students understand their personal and social self broadening of adolescent world. Adolescence is characterized by significant biological, physical, cognitive, social, emotional and moral changes. Understanding the present real self and future ideal self is a necessity at this age as mostly teenagers go through identity crisis. In these changing times, when adolescents are highly influenced by unfamiliar, less controlled, and less secure world of peers it becomes even more important to help children build a stronger understanding of their strengths and limitations.
The purpose of the workshop was to enable the adolescents with the leadership capabilities and skills. It is alternative to give a level of exposure. Leadership program focused on developing oneself, one’s confidence and provided opportunities for the adolescents to be vocal about their opinions in their life. The training program included series of workshops with structured activities for self-reflection and discovery.
In the beginning of the workshop concepts like emotional intelligence and uniqueness was introduced through analogies and videos. Students got an opportunity to work on life tree where Life tree consists of roots (support system), branches (activities and hobbies that enhance life, like music), leaves (life lessons and experiences), flowers (dreams and future aspirations), fruits (accomplishments). The above components of the life tree were discussed in detail. Other aspects of the day included talking about each one’s role model with their qualities, understanding self concept by writing about themselves and dividing the content into different categories like internal me, external me and social me.
The outcome of the day was to understand one self, their goals, support system and other factors contribute to their growth in life.
The next day of the workshop was based on SWOT analysis where students spent time discussing how a quality could be either strength or a weakness. There were also discussions about concept of needs, values and beliefs where these three need to be in harmony in order to have a healthy self concept. Another model named ‘Circle of Control’ was established where the circle in the middle consists of things we can control, and the outer circle had things that are out of our control. Our focus should be on the circle in the middle. The final agenda of the day was interaction with a psychotherapist who conducted games and talked to students about changes in their body and attitude. She also emphasized on the importance of practicing and making yourself perfect and how the 5 senses have a significant impact on positive outlook like touching releases positive hormones. At the end of the day, students achieved linking their strengths to their life goals and assimilated their thoughts, beliefs, perspectives, emotions and behavior.
The final day of the workshop began with explaining the concept of different perspectives and reasoning. The session was introduced by showing images of Indian sweets. Each student was asked to share their favourite dish of all the images and why they had chosen it. Everyone was told to think about different reasons. Next, the story of Arunima Sinha was depicted to understand the significance of never giving up attitude, persevering and demonstrating resilience. Success stories of Steve Jobs, Savitribai Phule were discussed and emphasis was put on how they overcame their limitation. A significant agenda of the day was to help children start building ‘resilience’. To have a clear understanding about the resilience concept, a case study about Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (a warrior from Maharashtra) and his characteristics’ was discussed. Facilitators also laid emphasis on different layers of resilience i.e. physical support, social support, outlook and inner strength.
As a next step, Students were asked to write their strengths and weaknesses and link them with the characteristics of resilience. This helped them identify their inner strengths. Finally students participated in role play activity where pairs were given scenarios related to showing resilience in difficult situations. The entire day provided a fresh perspective to students and they were successful in building resilience.
It can be said that as a final takeaway of the workshop, students learnt how to deal with various problems immediately and built the thinking skills to approach such issues. It has been observed that the girls are more confident in expressing themselves and put some thought before acting on a situation.
By Ritu Agrawal | Partnership Manager
By Kanan Gole | Project Contributor
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