Helping Children Grow
from Me to We
By Sunrita Sen
The Babri mosque in Ayodhya in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was demolished on December 6, 1991, by a mob of Hindu fanatics who believed that a temple to their god, Lord Ram, had been destroyed centuries ago to build the mosque. They wanted a temple rebuilt on the site. The demolition was followed by widespread sectarian violence in the country.
Pravah high school students on a field trip
The traumatic events stimulated some soul-searching for Ashraf Patel and a group of her young friends, most of them members of the corporate sector in Delhi. "We discussed it constantly whenever we met," said Meenu Venkateshwaran, a member of the group. "We felt we had to do something about changing the mindset that bred such hatred . . . that allowed such things to happen."
The need for intervention was clear. The natural target, according to Patel, was young people who could be helped to acquire the ability to understand the emotions and point of view of others, and who were less prone to getting locked into the mindsets and stereotyping that is common to adults.
"Empathy is a core value that any human resources facilitator must harness," Patel said. Perhaps tragedies like the Babri violence would not happen again if children and youth could be shown that humility and respect for the other was not a sign of weakness; if the core value of empathy that exists in every person could be encouraged to come to the fore, flowering in a generation of young people many of whom would assume leadership positions later in life.
It was with these ideas in mind that the group founded Pravah in 1993 as an experiment with adolescents and youth in Delhi. Most of the founders of Pravah were management professionals, but they had worked in the social sector in some capacity or the other, driven by a need to connect with a larger India and contribute in some way to a better world. They saw the violence of this period as symptomatic of a wider malaise, and felt the need to do more than indulge in drawing room debates in order to counter the dangerous trends that seemed to be tearing apart their country's social fabric.
The Pravah team
Pravah in Hindi means "flow." Patel describes it as "a free flow of ideas and expressions among people to bring about change." The flow, she adds, also represents the journey of life of the individual from self to society.
Pravah's agenda was clear: inculcating the value of empathy in young people and helping them develop life skills that encouraged respect for others. "By life skills, we mean understanding oneself, values and attitudes; creative problem-solving; critical thinking; decision-making; and conflict resolution," Venkateshwaran said.
"There is a high process orientation in our programs – we are not providing kids with answers, as much as we are helping them understand a process by which they can find their own answers. Of course, an understanding of social issues, for example, environment, poverty, homelessness, diversity, and so on, is part of this."
The co-founders of Pravah drew on their expertise and experience in human resources management to draw up an interactive program for school children that aimed to "energize the spirit of empathy that exists in us all," Patel said.
The members believed that first they needed to help young persons break the walls around the construct of self. "We felt they had to be guided to breaking the gap between 'me' and 'the other'," Patel said. "They had to understand themselves – why they thought the way they thought, why they felt the way they felt – before they learned to place themselves in others' shoes – to understand the feelings and reactions of others."
Breaking Myths and Stereotypes
Pravah's "Me to We" program for children between the ages of 9 and 14 is a 40-hour module. In some schools it is completed in a couple of months, while in others it takes at least one year. The main objective is to help break myths, stereotypes, notions, and assumptions, and to help the children understand issues and make conscious choices.
In the first exercise, a group of 25-30 children discuss and debate issues to enable them to identify their values and understand themselves and their reaction to others. The issues are usually contextual, and most often the issue is the proposition that "violence is justified for the right cause."
The children are divided into groups of threes – those who support a proposition, those who oppose it, and those who are not sure. The "for" and "against" groups are then asked to try and persuade the "not sures" to their side. They must defend and oppose the proposition within their peer group, and are provided with literature and encouraged to do research that produces facts and figures supporting their argument.
The process gets the children thinking about their values, attitudes, and ideas. Often they begin with "this is clearly a waste of time," but subsequently get involved and stimulated. Once the excitement of the exercise is over, the arguments are processed within the peer groups and the children are asked to identify the values that have determined their choices. Often they find they have conflicting values, but had made a choice by ranking one value over another.
An effort is made to guide them toward developing a critical thinking process in which they make conscious choices. One of the themes that surfaced often during the initial years was community stereotypes, among them the notion held by some Hindu children that Muslims were not clean, Venkateshwaran said.
Often, the discussions would reveal that the stereotyping resulted from lack of awareness. Venkateshwaran recalls that a little girl, with a very rigid anti-Muslim stance, was totally taken aback at the end of the program when she was told that one of the Pravah organizers with whom she had been interacting was a Muslim. "She did not fit into the girl's notion of a Muslim," she said.
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Benu Sharan, a student at Delhi University describes his experiences with Pravah:
"I didn't know anything at all about Pravah, but went along with friends to one of its meetings. I joined the program after that, and I feel it helped me in at least two ways – it gave me a 'real' experience of things that I knew about, but had taken for granted, and it gave me the confidence to air my thoughts aloud. I was so shy before I joined Pravah, now I feel I can always say what I think.
"I was a part of Pravah's media program, and we did a project on the homeless in Delhi. I know that so many people do not have a shelter over their heads, but the discussions and the stories my friends told me of their experiences during a night out on the streets of Delhi, which I was unable to attend, gave me an insight one cannot get by reading newspaper articles.
"They were real people, and the hardship they face in their daily lives was somehow nearer home. I know that I am more perceptive about the situation and feelings of others after my experience with Pravah. I hope my heightened awareness of how people are different and yet the same will help me when I complete my bachelor of education degree and start teaching children."
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Children are paired in another exercise and asked to write down a few things they liked about another person. "As they read out each other's notes, we did not need to explain to them how good it feels to be appreciated," Venkateshwaran said.
In another exercise called "broken squares," children are given parts of puzzles which they must piece together, realizing in the process that the needs of others and their own are interdependent. "It teaches them team spirit, how to be solution-oriented yet creative, and that at the end of the day, the whole is a sum of the parts," Patel said.
The children adopt a project of their choice at the end of the 40-hour program. It can be anything from planting trees to cleaning up the neighborhood to teaching underprivileged children.
Energizing the Spirit of Empathy
Pravah also organizes "fun camps," a weeklong trip for urban school children to a rural area to give them exposure to village conditions and to encourage their appreciation of diversity through real-life experience. After an orientation workshop, they spend time with the villagers and sometimes do a socio-economic survey. At least one school in Delhi has made this program an essential part of its curriculum in Standard IX (ninth grade).
Experiencing the rural way of life: city kids trying their hand at spinning cotton
Pravah's program is operating in about 30 schools in the Delhi region. About 50 to 60 percent of these schools are state-run institutions for lower-income groups. The rest are attended by middle- and higher-income groups. Pravah's staff of five persons is training teachers at the schools to be facilitators so that the schools can run the program independently.
The "Me to We" program is interactive, participant-driven and goal-oriented. Setting it in a contemporary context is crucial, Patel said. Students are encouraged to relate to and apply their experience to real-life situations by participating in social action, debates, discussions, theatre, plays, music, creative writing, simulation games, and behavioral exercises.
Pravah's Students Mobilization Initiative for Learning through Exposure (SMILE) program is aimed at developing empathy and inculcating a spirit of social service among college students through similar methods. The program, which Pravah has been running in Delhi since 1996, currently enrolls 60 to 100 student volunteers from universities in Delhi.
These students participate in workshops that prepare them for a four- to six-week project with a rural citizen sector organization. They also participate in theater workshops, media projects like preparing newsletters and short films and participate in team-building exercises and feedback camps.
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