Seplaa young leader’s club showing off the peace sign
By Fatima Jafar, Coordinator Seplaa Young Leader’ club.
Seplaa Young Leader’s club is the name of a vision to build future leaders. Seplaa Young Leader’s club organizes different workshops and seminars for kids along with the summer camp for kids aged 8-15 years annually during summer vacations. Summer camp 2017 was all about fun and providing the kids with an opportunity to enhance their writing skills, speaking skills, articulation, peace, team work and story writing through different fun activities, workshops and tasks. I was invited by Ms. Ammara Farooq Malik to familiarize kids with peace and team building. The workshop was of 1 hour and 30 minutes with fun filled activities for the kids. My basic notion was to keep the kids composed and interested. The workshop started with a basic introduction of me and the kids. We started with a peace song by Jack Hartman. All the kids sang along and enjoyed the song. The peace song was a pictorial illustration of what peace means to kids. Peace for kids starts from the simplest things like sharing, smiling at each other, caring for your fellows, protecting each other and being united.
Minefield activity
In order to convey our message of peace we had three activities lined up for that day. Minefield was an amazing activity which was loved by the kids. This game helped them to understand what coordination means. Two teams were formed. One person from one team was blind folded and his team mates had to direct him verbally to pass through the minefield without stepping on the mine. The opponents had to mislead the blind folded man. I was amazed when the blindfolded kids guessed the voices of their opponents and brilliantly followed the instructions of their own team members only. Affan, Amal and Hareem, won this one by completing the task in just 1 minute and 29 secs. Their coordination and confidence was beyond good.
Second activity that I conducted was throw the ball in the basket. Two teams were made again by randomly shuffling the kids. Two people from each team had to balance a light weight ball on a paper and carry it to the basket. The remaining members had to protect the ball while the opponent team had to blow to make the ball fall off the paper. Kids loved this game because it heated up the atmosphere of competition and team work. This game was a tie so I gave the kids a problem solving situation. The situation was that imagine you are sitting at a place you have always wanted to be like playing a video game in an AC room or watching a movie etc. and you see two kids quarrelling and hurting each other, what would you do. All the kids had amazing ideas. Affan and Rahma thought that they may intervene, ask the kids to be calm and help them resolve the situation. Hareem thought that she might share an ice cream to cool them down. Amal and Dina also had the notion to help them resolve the conflict. Zaina, the 5 year old, nailed it with her exclusive idea. According to Zaina, we should take both of them away from each other, then ask them to relax. When they both cool down, we can arrange a meeting for them to solve their conflict. The kids were very interactive and enthusiastic. Last activity that I conducted was to build a tower with plastic cups. The tallest and strongest tower in least time would won.
Kids deciding teams for the next game.
I loved how kids used their ideas and measurements to build this tower. Affan, Rahma and Hareem build their tower by doubling the cups so that the tower is strong. Whereas Amal, Dina and Zaina focused on building the tallest tower. This activity was won by Amal, Dina and Zaina as they completed their tower in 5 minutes and the tower stayed for almost 30 secs. As the kids realized it was the last activity of today’s session, they wanted to redo the tower activity. My aim of promoting team work, coordination, interaction, communication and entertaining the kids was accomplished.
Such activities are the need of hour to nourish the children with the basic values of spreading love and unity. Peace education was the main essence of this workshop and seplaa young leaders loved it.