UMOJA 2019 EDITION

If yesterday was making sure that everyone arrived on campus safely and settled into their new home, today was about building community.

After official introduction to the Short Course by ISM Advancement Office and a session about the United World College movement, participants were tasked to create community guidelines.

We have 18 different countries represented here during the Short Course, and whilst being in such a diverse environment is exciting, it can also create challenges. Whilst SC Coordinators explained the hard rules of the ISM campus, and talked through few health and safety-related non-negotiables', we let participants think through their own community guidelines.

Participants pledged to forget their cellphones, be punctual, and respect quiet hours after 10:30 pm. But more impressively they pledged to respect each other, to be each others’ keepers, to learn from each other’s cultures, and to be self-aware of their actions and their effects on others.

Once the Community Guidelines were defined and signed by everyone, we moved onto “Hopes, Fears and Expectations” session. Participants hope to learn as much as possible from the Short Course, they hope to be able to be useful to their communities, and whilst some fear of challenging themselves, and fear to open up - we encouraged everyone to push themselves beyond the ‘Comfort Zone’ and ‘Fear Zone’ into the ‘Learning Zone’ and even further into the ‘Growth Zone’. We are all excited to see participants grow through this transformational journey!

We played a lot of fun games, which were prepared and facilitated by our Umoja Fellows. We learnt through these games that trust and respect are very important concepts in Tanzanian society.

"Kama hautomuamini jirani wako, nani atakuja kukusaidia? (Swahili proverb)

"If you don’t trust your neighbor, who will be there to help you? (English translation)

The second half of the day was dedicated to ‘Introduction to Sustainability’, participants were divided into smaller groups and were made responsible for creating their sustainable cities. This activity challenged participants to think through multiple aspects of sustainability, decision making, opportunity costs, what sustainability means for each of us and how we can compromise to ensure ‘better’ means better for everyone.

It looks like our participants dream of environmentally friendly cities, places where the power is produced from renewable energy sources: sun, wind and water. They proposed impressive technological innovations to ensure nothing goes to waste in their cities - even hugs were proposed to be converted into energy. During the exercise - participants had to deal with few emergencies as well - drought, war and civil uprising. Sometimes taking difficult decisions meant they opted for some autocratic decisions!

We closed the day with a self-reflection, but it seemed that debates and conversations lasted long into the night. We are looking forward to tomorrow!