Today is the first day of IFP program.
We had to write down what we think of IFP and what IFP isn’t on post-it stickers. After that, we had to watch a video which explains what IFP is about and re-write our thoughts on post-it notes.
We were later separated into groups and given a box full of legos. We had to draw a piece of paper which gave us a task to do and we had to complete it without showing or saying what the task actually was. The difficult part was, we weren’t allowed to speak. So, you can guess that things didn’t go quite well. Some of the people were building, some were trying to figure out what they were doing and some were wondering how to properly do the given task. By the end of the section, we were asked “why might effective collaboration be important to peace building?”. We discussed about how without the communication, we cannot understand each other and had problems understanding others. At first, we were focused on completing our own task but later on we realised that we each had different tasks and we had to work together in order to accomplish what we were asked to do.
I think the activity we did can be applied to a real life situation. Communication, understanding, sharing and listening play a big role in peace building. If someone forced their ideas to the others and not listen to them, the negotiation among them will not work. However, if they were to stop and listen to one another, they would have shared ideas and create new ones.
That was what I learnt from the IFP today. Communication is the key to understand people with different cultures, backgrounds and ethnics.