An inter school exchange workshop ( WISCOMP)

Do not let the behaviour of others destroy your inner peace. Dalai Lama

Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP) is a pioneering peace-building initiative in South Asia. It foregrounds women's leadership in the areas of peace and security and promotes the cultures of pluralism and coexistence in the region. The WISCOMP workshop was organised as a part of an inter-school exchange programme led by Bluebells School International on 19 July 2019.

The conclave saw the participation of twenty-five students from five eminent schools across Delhi and one school from Kashmir. The visitors from the Dolphin International School, Pulwama were accommodated with families of students in New Delhi.

The Indian School was represented at the event by Damak Saxena of IX-D and Maanya Arora of VIII-D. The seminar laid a context for the young participants to exchange stories and experiences from their diverse contexts, recognise the richness of their diversities while building on their commonalities, collectively explore notions of identity, power and equality, and share insights on ways to cultivate compassionate classroom and school spaces.

The resource persons discussed this innovative idea using creative and inventive methods of teaching-learning. The ice breaker activity called upon the participants to pair up and write down the responses of their partners to the questions posed by the resource persons. Questions like What is your favourite cuisine? Who is your best friend and why? etc enabled the partners know one another better and enhanced their communication skills.

In the second activity, participants were given a slip with a description of a particular character. It necessitated the wearing of the costume of the said character and responding to the situation from a new perspective. The empathetic approach to learning based activity helped gain a better understanding of the given characters.

Hypothetical situations were presented to the participants like Did you face discrimination as a girl of Kashmiri origin living and studying in Delhi due to your fathers transfer? Did you feel depressed on getting bullied by your classmates because you are a boy of poor financial status and your father is a vegetable vendor?

The workshop was an opportunity to learn and widen the horizon of ones knowledge of issues related to equality, religion and peace.

Damak Saxena IX-D