Peace Summit Reflection

Student Name	Yasmyn Ntege
Activity Name / Description	Peace Summit
Location	Aga Khan Academy, Mombasa
Was it C, A, S or a combination?	CREATIVITY, SERVICE
Hours of CAS	30 Hours
Dates (Initiation – Completion)	Beginning of the term – 22nd March

Peace summit is held voluntarily every year by a group of students in DP1 to the whole Grade 9 cohort. It is a part of their humanities curriculum and so whatever the theme is that is decided on in Peace Summit, is probably the theme that the Grade 9s are focusing on. This year the theme was Resources and more specifically conflict over resources.

We had been split into group ourselves in the beginning of the term and in those groups, we were to come up with a teachable topic to be covered as one of the sessions in the final Peace Summit. Mrs Joanne had wanted one of the groups to be an art group, which kind of commemorates what the kids had learnt so far or throughout Peace Summit. I decided that that was what I wanted to work on and found two other people with similar interest. It was a bit hard at first to find an activity in the arts that is relevant to our topic and can be used as memorabilia from the kids about Peace Summit 2k16. As a result of this, we had many meets with the club supervisor who also then sent us to Mr Lawrence, one of the art teachers.

It took us a while but we finally settled on collage making as our session. The aim of the session was to engage students in an artistic activity that will commemorate what they have learnt at that point during the Peace Summit. We then had to come up with class objectives which were as follows:

Class Objectives:

• Do word and idea associations with the themes on manila paper

• Outline a statement that reflects a teaching or aspect of the peace summit, you feel the rest of the school should also be aware of

• Connect your statement with your assigned theme and communicate this through the art form of collage

• Present collage to the rest of the group explaining reasons for artistic decisions to be able to communicate the statement

Having all this set up made it easier in practice to implement the activities. Also before the actual Peace Summit, we had to be organized in the way that we would conduct our sessions and ourselves on the day. I was grateful for the fact that we had a working session on Saturday because otherwise, our group may have been in trouble. We took the responsibility upon ourselves and managed to send everything we had to get done to Ms Joanne and Mr Adnan. It was quick and efficient planning and I feel that that experience really developed by planning and organization skills.

On the day of Peace Summit, we started off with a hunger banquet, which was an interactive way of letting the students get a feel of how it is to actually live in a situation where you are at an advantage or disadvantage when it comes to distribution of resources. I feel like it was effective as it was easy to apply this to real life and the feedback I received from the students was that they really enjoyed it and found it educational. It also opened up room for discussion and the one we had afterwards was very fruitful. I learnt a lot just facilitating the activity and that’s a good sign I guess. 

Halfway through the hunger banquet I had to rush to set up the area we had been allocated. I was a bit stressed as we were given the Tamu Balcony and not the art room as I had in mind and so I had to readjust the pre-existing set up I had come up with and set up the whole balcony as best as I could. I settled for an O-shaped setting as it looked appealing and the students weren’t closed off from each other. The first session was a little awkward as it was after all our first session and both us and the year 9s were just adjusting. But after that, we became more and more open with the kids and the fact that our session was an art workshop made the whole vibe just a bt more calming and fun. We even took selfies and were able to get a lot of pictures.

Additionally, my job throughout Peace Summit was also to take pictures and also co-manage the social media platform (Instagram). I was able to get almost everyones picture which was well appreciated. Additionally, by creating a selfie challenge, we were able to let other people online and in other year groups the good work that was going on in those few days over social media. It fit in well with the messages of one of the Keynote Speakers which was Facebook (Social media) to be able to achieve peace.

SUPERVISORS: Mr. Adnan Visram and Mrs. Joanne Gogelescu