Workshop in Panchgani
It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness
~Old Chinese Proverb, I recently heard it in a pretty awesome song at our workshop in Panchgani (really wish I had the mp3)
I keep on mentally referring to the past week as a retreat rather than a workshop. It was our 3rd Indicorps workshop of the year, and dramatically different from the past 2. The first one had a Socratic dialogue theme, where we read and discussed a LOT of text to give us a fresh outlook on leadership. The 2nd workshop involved a 4-day long project that we worked on for the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad. Both were jam-packed with lots of work and located in Ahmedabad. This workshops’ theme was “From Micro to Macro.” We did a good deal of sitting down and discussing issues, and one case study, where we analyzed a couple of Government policies (one around mid-day meals for schoolchildren and the other about a sanitation program for slums) and came up with recommendations. The workshop was located in Panchgani, a small hill-station 100kms from Pune. It’s very popular as a weekend retreat from Bombay and Pune, and it’s also very famous for boarding schools (as are most hill-stations in India). Interesting sidenote: Freddie Mercury (the late lead singer of Queen) attended St. Peter’s school in Panchgani, where he learned to play Piano and formed his first band.
The workshop was hosted at a place called Asia Plateau, a conference center at a place called Initiatives of Change, formerly known as Moral Rearmament. It’s run by an intesting group of people. I’m still not exactly sure I understand what they do, but check them out on the web here.
The plateau is supposedly the 2nd tallest in Asia.
I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll do a quick wrapup of the workshop by pictures rather than words… There are a lot but they are really low-quality (click on them for bigger versions and higher quality).
Among other fun activities, we:
Hiked the plateau
Played really silly games: In this one, the 3 people were supposed to form a tree, but Anand (right) is forming the ear of an elephant instead of tree-branches, so he loses
Climbed trees
Played Ping-Pong-Tennis… a game on a smaller tennis court with big paddles, using a tennis ball. Really awesome.
Picked Strawberries from the farm of a huge jam manufacturer, Mapro. Apparently their season is over, so they didn’t mind us coming and picking/eating hundreds and hundreds of strawberries. (Radhika, Lisa, and Archana)
Me Prem and Shaila decided that we’d share all of our strawberries, so we had a rotation system so we each got to eat 1/3rd of the strawberries.
Jumped on a trampoline:
Sat around in the library and discussed development-related issues:
Enjoyed beautiful scenery
I’m in Bombay now, will be headed to Delhi in the near future.
