First Workshop

July 29, 2011

Today I led a workshop for the staff of Shakti Samuha (another anti-trafficking organization based in Nepal).  Their staff is mostly comprised of survivors rescued from India and countries outside of Nepal.  The workshop was entitled “Alternatives to Violence” and is a compilation of the many workshops I myself attended while in my first year of graduate school.  The results completely exceeded my expectations.  I had been so nervous that I expected the worst.  Instead, everyone participated (even despite the language barrier).  People shared in a way that I don’t think they had ever done in public before, even the guys.  I told them about the Rwanda genocide and the Holocaust (which a large number of people in Nepal apparently don't know about), and linked those two tragedies to roots of violence (fear, misunderstanding, lack of communication, etc).  We also talked about the war in Nepal.  There was a question about how to deal with state-sponsored corruption, which is a huge problem here in Nepal.  I was not sure how to answer that one, so I gave examples of non-violent resistance movements that have worked (Gandhi's "Satyagraha" and Martin Luther King Jr's movement against racism).  At the end of the day, the participants gave positive feedback and asked me to return with more workshops :)  Whew.