The Samvaad format allows learners to comprehensively and deeply engage with the topic. The thrill of a night-stay at school combined with the magnitude and significance of the discussion creates a unique state of mind where students are open and willing to learn, share and grow.
At its core, the 10th grade Samvaad challenges students to question their beliefs about poverty, charity and caste-based discrimination. Due to the way it’s structured, it opens the learner’s mind to highly nuanced takes and introspection on grey areas in determining what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’, as well as reflection on the self’s thoughts and actions.
The intense 26-hour period has a high pay-off which is evident in the student-led presentations the morning after. The students find themselves gripped by the issues and take it upon themselves to try and disseminate their recently acquired understanding to those willing to listen. While one cannot say if this change is significant enough to last more than a few hours before being lost in a world of constant news updates and the instant gratification of social media, this truly feels like a step in the right direction, if that direction is youth engagement with world issues.
Student experience:
It’s always hard to imagine what it’s like to be someone else or to get someone to feel what others might be feeling. Samvaad managed to do that for me.
Samvaad initiated conversations around topics we don’t talk about in our daily lives. It explored the ideas of privilege, disenfranchisement, and the continued complexity that exists around social hierarchy in India
After the entire session, all the activities and discussions came together to create a large shift in my perspective. It pushed me to think about social and political structures in a new light. I learned the paramount importance of listening and paying attention to the problem. Our upbringing and privilege has numbed us to a lot going on in the world and Samvaad helped me identify my blind spots. It reminded me to question if an idea, action or thought embraces and acknowledges the humanity of all people and that the way things have always been done aren’t the way things have to be done.
- Esha Manchanda and Pragya Verma
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