Wow! So much to relate! Sunday, I was able to spend more time with the students and we ran one of the modules! It went pretty well, although it would have been great to have more time (always, always the refrain) and to have spent some serious time thinking about how to translate some of the words into Thai.

Saturday afternoon, the youth team went through the toolkit and seemed to think it would be very helpful, at least from first glance. We briefly went through each topic to decide which would be the most productive to run on Sunday. As I described what Social Identity encompassed, I saw one guy’s face light up, and that is the one we ended up running. (Social Identity is basically a theory used to understand how the different social groups we belong to create and affect our own self-perception, our perception of others, and their perception of us. It can also be used to understand and discuss different stereotypes and biases we all have about “other” groups. Pretty intriguing stuff!) (They were also interested in the Professional Image module, exclaiming, oh no! now we need three more years with these kids!!)

Social Identity was a really engaging topic for this particular group, as they are all ethnic minorities, from various hill tribes like the Karen, Lisu, Mien, and Hmong. The hill tribes occupy a complex position in Thai society. Many have migrated over the years from Burma and Laos, have stayed relatively isolated from Thai society, and are often treated as second class citizens. Interestingly, much of the Thai tourism economy in the north depends on these hill tribes, so all of this can create a very tense situation. And, according to S****, the director, many of the hill tribe villagers have their own ideas or biases toward other hill tribe members. All of which made for some very intriguing Social Identity conversation.

Anyways, S**** and I decided that he would facilitate the session as a way to bypass the language barrier as much as possible—he is fluent in Thai, having lived here nearly his entire life and only a few of the kids speak English. So I explained the session to him in a lovely little gas station coffee shop and the first thing we had to do was shorten, shorten, shorten. Apparently, things take longer in Thai J

So we cut the module down to an initial exploration of misunderstanding based on social memberships and then went straight into an explanation of what Social Identity was and the chart activity. From there, we had them think about which memberships might be helpful, hurtful, or neither to their leadership ability.

The small groups were very engaged in the initial conversation about misunderstandings or assumptions. So much so that we definitely had to cut them off before they were finished. We also only had a few minutes for large group sharing so we just heard two stories. One young man explained that he had been at a worship session when suddenly the police broke in, yelled that they were having an illegal meeting, arrested his pastor, and took him off in handcuffs. Everyone was very scared and not sure what was happening. About 20 minutes later, the police brought the pastor back and he explained that actually, the whole thing had been staged. He wanted them to understand what happens to Christians in Laos. Another young woman explained that, after a very complex set of events, involving an affair and a subsequent hex, her uncle committed suicide. When the police arrived, they were fairly brusque and made several disparaging comments about how this sort of behavior was expected because they were from a certain hill tribe. Pretty heavy experiences.

From there, S**** explained the concept of Social Identity and the chart they were to fill out. Finding the right translation of the categories “given”, “chosen”, and “core” was difficult but they managed and took several minutes to fill out the charts. Then, S**** had them make the (+) next to memberships which enhance their leadership, (-) next to those which might detract and (?) next to those of which they were unsure of the effect. Then they shared—seemed pretty engaged again. One girl sitting near us went through her list, asserting at first that all her memberships were negative: that “being a girl—nothing but trouble!”, “being born poor—terrible!”, being a hill tribe person—awful! But then she started to reconsider a bit and put a question mark next to hill tribe. And she stated that her height and good looks definitely enhanced her leadership abilities.

After that, we had a brief large group share out and then got some feedback from the students and the youth team. The students seemed to appreciate the activity, saying it allowed for self-reflection, but it would have been useful to have more time. The youth team said much the same thing—what might be slated as a 45 min activity would translate into about 1.5 hours in Thailand. So our 50-minute rendition definitely went over the allotted time. And, lastly, it would be really important to translate the words and concepts carefully. “Given” in Thai means something different than how the same word might be understood in English. So, again, translation, translation, translation!!!

I also did a couple interviews with the students—will post those later!  And will post some pictures soon!

After that session, I got to spend some time with the youth team–the youth leadership team’s adult advisers and they looked over the toolkit.  It got very positive reviews–in fact, they wanted to take it and photocopy it on a xerox machine, because, as they put it, this is Thailand, after all.  While training on how to use would be useful, they said the main thing would be to translate it into Thai.  Translation is 90% of the battle.  Once that occurred, they would be good to go.  They are a very skilled facilitation team, so training is probably less important for them.

It’ll be fun to see what tomorrow brings when we try out the first module!

At the Y, I met with a woman from the international center.  Maybe the director?  I’m not entirely sure.

M, choosing his metaphors

A couple of days ago, we went to Monk Chat for the second time, to talk to “M” again.  The first time we monkchatted, M told us that monks are supposed to be leaders in the community and that he, particularly, was interested in social justice.  That is why he was studying politics in school.  M’s big dream is to create economic balance among all the countries.  That way, people in Thailand will have the same sort of socioeconomic status as those in the US.  That way, people in Thailand can travel all over the world like people in the US.

At our second conversation, we broke out CCL’s Leadership Metaphor Explorer cards.  These are a series of cards with pictures of different sorts of leadership dynamics and a descriptive phrase on them.  Most of them are fairly straightforward, although a few are slightly esoteric.  Vocab was a big issue, so M broke out his electronic translator and went to town.  Over and over, M said, “why they use such hard words?!”  I wish I knew, M, I wish I knew.

M chose two pictures, one to answer the question of how a monk should be a leader in the community and one to answer the question of how he wished to be a leader.  Both intersected in the theme of “know thyself.”  For M, the most important part of leadership is knowing onself first.  Only when we know ourselves, can we then lead others.  He also chose several other cards to represent the various aspects of leadership a monk exhibits.  But the crux of the issue was self-knowledge.

M and his mentor/friend choosing pictures with Amy

After we went through that set of questions, we broke out CCL’s Visual Explorer, a set of photographs of a variety of things.  We asked M and his friend to choose photos that represented where they were now in reaching some of the goals we had just discussed.  M chose two that were folks at the beginning of great journeys.  One was of a man at the bottom of a tall ice covered mountain, looking up.  M’s friend’s English wasn’t as good, so he just chose pictures that struck him as beautiful or engaging–”freedom” of a little girl dancing.  All in all, a great conversation and a great afternoon!