Day 4: Drama Workshop
Our workshops are going on, and as the KU Global Aid team, we are devoted to doing our best in the remaining time of our project. The 4th session of the workshops in Uzun Yusuf Middle School took place in April 5. Humor was a central element of this session, since the activities were based on comic strips and drama. We shared a lot of laughter with our participants!
In our first activity, we randomly divided the participants into groups of two and handed out blank comic strips to each group. We asked them to fill in the comic strips together with their own jokes.
Laughter is perhaps one of the most powerful things to bring people together. When we added teamwork to this, it turned into a great opportunity to teach children about cooperation and the wonders it can create. That’s why we included this activity in our workshops. In addition to this, the students had a chance to experiment with their sense of humor and creativity through original jokes. They liked this activity so much that by the end of it, they were asking for more blank comics to take home!
The following (and main) activity of the workshop was a drama exercise. Again, we divided the students into random groups and gave them the basic scenarios and roles we had prepared for this exercise. After reading the scenes, they had to improvise for their roles.
While writing the scenarios, we aimed at creating situations of conflict. For example, some of the scenarios included a bus passenger picking on women, an employer bullying the employees, a teacher discriminating against some of the students etc. These situations also gave the participans the opportunity to stand up for themselves and challenge the root of the conflict. Of course, we wanted this activity to teach the students how to take constructive, rational and respectful actions in a difficult positions like this. We also wanted them empathize with the victims of these actions by imagining themselves in their shoes.
The students easily recognized the problems in the scenarios and pointed out to them. We’re hoping that the drama exercise helped them gain a better idea about how to react to similar situations in real life. Perhaps in the future, if they encounter a bully or are treated unfairly, these little instances will give them the motivation to make their voice heard.
As always, we finished our workshops with an insightful discussion on the day’s activities. It was a wonderful session for all of us and we’re hoping that our following sessions will proceed in the same way!
In addition to the usual workshop sessions in this month, we also joined the Children’s Fest with our participants on the national holiday of April 23. It was a joyous day filled with different activities including musical shows, face painting, soccer tournament and many others.
If you want to learn about the rest of our project and other KU Global Aid activities, don’t forget to check our blog regularly! You can also follow our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts to get more information!
