Leadership

Gustavo and I planned a leadership workshop for the kids in the youth group that we facilitated on Sunday. It was a true collaboration in the planning process, as I contributed parts of the leadership workshop I did with Gina at Heartland, and he contributed his own ideas based in his 10 years of experience working with Nicaraguan youth. We both got really excited about our ideas and how to make the workshop as participative as possible.

Because we started late (an hour and a half!!), we didn't have nearly enough time to do everything we'd planned. The two activities we started with were fantastic! We did an activity called People and Things. In each group, one person was the "person" and denominated each person as a "thing" that they would use. In the first picture, Marling is sitting on her chair watching her TV, and in the second, the kids are sitting on their sofa. The idea being that they think about how it feels to be used and how it feels to treat others like things.

The next activity was a dramatization of the different kinds of leaders... autocratic, bureaucratic, paternalistic, democratic and passive. I was amazed by the kids' ability to improvise theater. They were hilarious and creative, and they didn't need hardly any props, just dialogues. I've definitely noticed that kids here are able to tell long stories from a young age, like their parents, with all the gestures and comments that adults make. It's pretty incredible.

The only things was that we couldn't really deepen the discussion. The kids started losing interest and didn't have the background knowlege I'd expected. When we asked them to think of a leader and the characteristics they admired in them, most answered their mom or dad because of the support they gave them throughout their life. It was very superficial. There wasn't time to talk more about leadership qualities and have them set their own goals for themselves about how to be better leaders. But the good thing was that they participated and maybe came away with something (including a good lunch!)