‘All hope abandon, ye who workshop prepare!’ - this phrase perfectly describes our feelings about work we were to conduct while we realize that it is definitely not THAT easy as it could appear at glance. Well, the intellectual adventure we went through did not appear to be that picturesque as the one Dante has experienced, but believe us - it was quite close. Let the journey begin!
We were very satisfied with our assignment; the topic was briefly described as ‘Asylum seekers/migrants’. Full of enthusiasm, we started preparations. Our task was to come up with
a 90 minute workshop scenario for Polish high school students, which would root the issue in question in the history, refer to specific human rights and, most importantly, would be empowering for student to act – to take at least little steps towards making a difference. And this is where troubles began. How to introduce the topic, be specific, empowering and leave space for discussion and own ideas within 90 minutes? It proved to be extremely hard to combine all of those elements. For example, how to link a narrow topic with proper empowerment of students? It appears hard, at least at glance, to indicate what students could do in regard to trade of women for sexual slavery purposes to/from Poland. Furthermore, majority of issues we discussed at that stage of preparations could be addressed properly only by amending the legislative framework, what is (is it?) beyond power of an individual single man. Besides, we wanted to keep the topic as close to students’ day-to-day life as it can be. Otherwise, it could be perceived not as a real, serious affair, but rather as remote news on TV, which is even too remote to believe it.
The very first idea we had was to focus on the attitude Poles have towards migrants. We find it quite a real problem, as Poles, living in one of the most homogeneous European states, tend not to be familiar with the issue of migrants. Then we developed the other idea – we tried to focus on people being forced to labor when they emigrate from Poland, what is the topic of an extreme importance as existence of labor camps in contemporary Europe (including Poland) constitutes a huge danger for youth going abroad for a seasonal job. The topic proved to be too broad and after some trials to narrow it we finally decided to leave it behind. Some could say that we gave up too easily, but those first attempts helped us indeed to develop some tools, exercise and activities we could use in our workshop. At this stage we presented to the other fellows the exercise we had developed, aiming to make students curious and emotionally involved into the topic. During this activity student were given real job offers which can be found in any Polish newspaper. They were about collecting apples in France, tomatoes in Italy, etc. The questions to students about their imagination of the job based on its description followed. Finally, having them expressed their expectations about how the job would be, we presented some photos taken in a real Italian labor camp, showing that things are not always like they appear to be. We can proudly say that others really liked our exercise. Less proudly we need to add that the general idea of the workshop was subject to constructive criticism – and that was something we definitely needed. Being probably too excited about the ideas we had, we initially did not see obstacles and dangers we might face in case we went further while developing that workshop scenario. Being rich in some new experiences, with some new tools and ideas, learning on our own mistakes we started everything once again, just from scratch.
At that point we realized that one of our primary goals should be delivering knowledge. Topics we tried to address were all quite new to students. We are of view that people tend to be indifferent to issues that do not involve them personally. While discussing possible topics we discovered that there is something common for all them – the attitude people generally have towards migrants and asylum seekers. This attitude can be shortly described as indifference. And that was it. Bingo! We found something relevant from human rights’ perspective and something being close enough to students’ every day. But is indifference a problem? We are deeply convinced that it is indeed. Indifference means ignorance. Lack of knowledge. People often fear things they do not understand. Fear might have further implications, e.g. violence. Even though it is obviously not as easy as we describe it, indifference still remains the attitude underlying people’s behavior towards others and in this case – towards migrants. History is full of examples of how people’s indifference caused or did not stop the evil (e.g. history of the Holocaust). When we already had the core idea, then we quickly developed the whole scenario. We narrowed the topic to indifference toward migrants, and more specifically – towards refugees. While we had some material to work on, our stuff could easier address problems we were facing. With their help we ultimately specified our goals. We fixed some other deficiencies and inconsistencies. Unquestionably, this is the effect and the power of discussion with others, of subjecting one’s ideas to constructive criticism and of proper supervision of someone more experienced. Even though sometimes we differed with our supervisors in the vision and content of workshop, we are of the opinion that thanks to these talks and discussions we managed to finally come up with something of which we can be proud.
Lastly, while having everything on our minds, we started putting the ideas on paper. Presentation, video, data, information, exercises and activities – step by step everything has been written down, just in order to make our workshop as useful as only possible for anyone, who would like to bring students’ awareness on the topic of refugees and to fight people’s indifference towards them. We spent a lot of time meeting, discussing items, arguing even about details. A side effect of our meetings was that we developed our skills in Italian cuisine – well, making pasta and risotto is no secret to us now.
To sum up, we can say that overall it was quite a challenge. Most surprisingly, the challenge was the task and not working in a group. We divided the tasks evenly. However, preparing a scenario proved to be something hard, especially for us who were not experienced in this field. We went through the real intellectual adventure – from initial enthusiasm, towards chaos caused by too many ideas, arguments about the shape of the scenario, anger caused by (as it appeared at that time) unsolvable problems, resignation with failure, new hope and then in the end simple, plain happiness from accomplishing our task successfully. We learned a lot, we gained loads of experience – this is something what we have taken for ourselves. What we give back as an exchange is an exemplary workshop scenario. It will neither solve all the problem of the world, nor will change the place where we live, but we do believe that it can be just a little step towards change for better.
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