2 August: Personal involvement and identity

Today (02/08) we talked about identity: how do we act in a group, what are the moments in our lives where we felt like taking action? Leading up to thinking about what activists can fight for or against. After this we chose one of these subjects to have some fictive presentations about in order to feel how personal involvement has an influence on us. We ended the day with a Belgian cultural night.

The day started with a traditional breakfast at eight thirty. Whilst still waking up we were already wondering what the day would bring for us. After the breakfast we immediately went to the Markaz, an old bomb shelter used by Sadaka Reut, to start the program. To warm up we had a small game

After the warm-up we started with the actual program. The subject of the day was identity. The first part of the workshop was thinking about what position we normally take when we are in a group and which is the case in this group. This was done by putting our name on a boat. When for example one is at the wheel that could be because he likes to ‘steer’ people into the right direction and motivate them.

The workshop continued with thinking about moments in our lives where we felt like taking action. We tried to summarize these into a few points which our host organisation Sadaka Reut can fight for. A couple examples were racism and sexism.

After this part of the workshop we moved back to the office of Sadaka Reut to have lunch. During the lunch some of us learned how to count in Hebrew, Arabian, Dutch and French. Another experience with the local eating habits tasted like a little angel dancing on our tongues.

When the program started again we were asked to make some fictive presentations in small groups depending on the topics we decided in the previous workshop. During the presentations the groups were secretly watched by other participants on how they coped with personal involvement in their subject. The presentations varied from the island Lesbos suing the Lesbian community to the political crisis in Belgium.

After the short break the participants were criticized by the last group who were following the presentations carefully. The point of this was to show how personal involvement can have an influence on our opinion about a certain topic.

We ended the day by having a Belgian cultural night, where the host organisation learned more about Belgium and its habits in a creative and humoristic way.

In short it was again, one fine day!

Dries (Claessens) and Angelique