As IFP is an activity primarily for Grade 11 students and the final weeks after the Grade 5 workshop were spent on my CAS project, I would just like to write quickly to reflect on the experience as a whole. I was able to collaborate with many new people in this activity, as well as face challenges with them as we communicated and persevered through the pandemic, planning projects together and delegating tasks and discussing. Although sometimes we had disagreements, we all realised that we had similar morals in wanting to create a respectful, tolerant and open-minded environment regardless of our views.
We also had many amazing workshops from some great speakers about listening, paraphrasing and other important skills which translate not only to presentation and facilitation skills, but also in daily friendships and interactions. These understandings underpinned every activity we did afterwards. Furthermore, as we planned through the pandemic it became increasingly important to be accountable for any issues that were encountered safety-wise in our workshops, especially as there were some activities that could have risked injury, as well as activities in-person where we had to be aware of health regulations. If we did not heed these restrictions, it would have a detrimental effect on the future (similar) events hosted by future IFP teams, and therefore I think that we all felt morally obliged to adhere to restrictions.
I also learned about the difference in the facilitation of discussions to learn about global issues versus actually learning about the global issue. Although it is very helpful in understanding systematically the issue at hand (using many conflict analysis tools such as Galtung’s conflict triangle) it is not always necessary in order to be a good facilitator. Good facilitators enable understanding by encouraging students to take initiative to think critically and develop their own, unique ideas about an issue rather than telling them what to think. Therefore, I aimed to align myself with this definition of a facilitator (learned through IFP) throughout the year and further into my future in my career choices.
I had an amazing experience with IFP even though we weren’t able to run workshops overseas (as is the usual protocol) due to the pandemic, and I am thankful for the opportunity to connect with new people and learn so much about the fundamental principles that underpin how humans can successfully and peacefully interact with each other.