Diving into the question of 'Who am I?' with the adolescent boys!

“I like to dance but never had courage to go for it, however my classmates motivated me and then finally last year I participated into group dance. Now I can dance and enjoy without hesitation”

“My friends helped me get into sports. I was so scared initially but now that fear is no more and I enjoy playing sports”

The session on identity with the students of Government School started on a very different note – unlike our usual group number, here we had 80+ students in a smaller space with less time but with an unbinding enthusiasm. We were thrilled, excited and yet on our toes with our beginning in a new Government School.

We began with a quick introduction of Sahas and our work followed by engaging on the agreements for creating a safe and inclusive space – the approach we followed was very different and the response received was enthralling.

This was followed by inviting the participants to create their identity maps that included exploring their lives, likes, dislikes, ambitions, aspirations and others. What captured me was the openness and eagerness of the students in participating and sharing their thoughts! Some of the interesting aspect was to achieve bigger dreams to make their parents happy, love for writing songs, engage in dance and engaging in household chores etc.

Through the life cycle of human being, we engaged on understanding how our identity changes over course of life, with age and how that affects us. This was followed by sharing story of a girl through her teenage to adult life in order to emphasize on the importance of holding on to certain values that could shape our present and future. This story was created, shaped and shared in a way to tell positive attributes or values however with this group many thoughtful outcomes surfaced! So while the students do believed that the girl was strong, honest, never shied away from sharing her feelings but they also shared that this girl was lonely, wanted friends and was sad. This just shows how perspective adolescents are, they could easily tap on the feelings which were not said clearly- seeing by the expressions of many of the students – it seemed that they could relate to it, wanting to say that this is my story and that’s how I feel.

In all our other sessions with various groups of adolescents, we have encountered animosity between students, dislike between them but this group set a splendid example of peer support and co-learning. Here we discovered how students have supported their peers in engaging in their aspirations of dancing, singing, sports and even studies. It is so important to tap into this energy for constant encouragement of support and growth.

Moving towards the last activity where the participants were encouraged to write their positive attributes ‘Seeing good in ourselves’ – the enthusiasm was just unmatched; we could see everyone just asking the meaning of various words and jotting them down on paper.

‘I am very hard working; I complete my homework and wash my own clothes’

As against many logistics hassles, it is needless to say that this experience was amazing and we are excited to see how our sessions go by with our new set of the participants.