We've reached one of my favorite days at the Academy ... it begins with Street Speaking and ends with the National Dinner and Dance!
In developing the schedule for the Leadership Academy, we identified a number of critical skills that would benefit the participants as they develop their leadership potential. Among the most important were communications and advocacy skills.
Before coming to Kosovo, I had been asked to plan workshops related to these topics and several others. Following some particularly good sessions on understanding power, community organizing, and a little bit on public speaking, I suggested the group might benefit from a very powerful activity called, Street Speaking.
I first encountered the activity when I had the chance to work with George Lakey, director of the Philadelphia-based, Training for Change and the amazing young people from Empty The Shelters, an organization co-founded by Claudia Horwitz, now the director of Stone Circles.
The idea behind the activity is to prepare young people to take a stand by sharing deeply (and publicly) from their hearts and minds about the issues in the world that move them to action. Following several workshops that helped the students uncover and discover their own passions and deeply held values, I gave them a homework assignment that asked them to free-write at least a page or two about what they want to see change in Kosovo. The instructions were understandable, but intentionally vague. I told them they would be using this homework to prepare 2-3 minutes of remarks that they would share in the middle of the town-square in Prizren, near where the training was taking place. This provoked quite a lot of excitement and anxiety among the students.
Today, it was clear that the participants had taken the homework very seriously. We used our Opening Circle to hear about what the participants were intending to share and we reviewed the central comfort zone concept which was introduced at the start of the Academy. We also talked about groundrules and safety; and what it might be like to have people gather and listen (or walk by ignoring what was happening).
With anxiety and excitement both high, we jumped in the bus and drove 30 minutes to the center square where we chose the most visible location. It was lunchtime and there were a good number of people hanging out in local cafés and others on the street. We gathered everyone, breathed together, and I stood up to introduce the activity to the crowds and invite the students to speak. Our friends Betsy and Faton from the U.S. Embassy (who helped make all of this possible) joined us, too!
It was amazing. The activity is always powerful, but with this group, even I was awestruck by how much it seemed to move people. Our groundrules during the week allowed participants to opt out of an activity and many had said they would watch, but not speak. Once we got started, however, all of this changed. Almost everyone stood to speak. They used the power of their voices to demand change, to bring attention to the issues that affect young people in Kosovo, and they got people thinking. We had little kids and mothers, teenagers, and seniors all stopping, listening, asking questions.
In our debrief at the Restaurant Renaissance, it became clear that this activity had powerfully affected all of us, even the training team. We talked about all kinds of new learning, emotions, power and passion. Students talked about what it was like to step fully outside of their comfort zones . . . and not only survive, but feel that comfort zone expanding.
This experience was certainly one highlight of the Summer School for me; and I hope that others will write here about what it meant to them.
