Meeting Future Generations - Part III

The next morning we drove to the edge of the town and from there we had a 4km trek through the jungle to the place where the workshop was taking place. The walk was beautiful, the scenery incredibly lush, flushed by the recent monsoon rains.

We arrived at the camp, set up by a natural ‘Shivling’, an image of the Hindu god's sexual organ! Apparently this one was the largest in the world!

The Future Club camp (organised directly by Future Generations) involved children from seven different schools and the topics were personal development, and the environment. The first exercise related to personality development, specifically about what makes a winner and what makes a loser, e.g. “A winner admits when he is wrong”, “a winner says it may be difficult but it is possible”, “a loser has a problem for every answer”, “a loser says it's not my job”, etc.

The next exercise was about developing speaking confidence, and everyone present was asked to pick a topic from a hat and speak for one minute, and were then judged on posture, volume, self-confidence, eye contact and energy. Short of volunteers at first they asked me to speak so I gave it a go. The children scored me well on eye-contact, energy, volume and posture (though one child said I stood like a singer. How wrong they were!). For self-confidence however they said I could do better, suggesting I was a bit nervous. It was a fair call. The children then all took turns and their peers were reasonably generous though not uncritical.

I then gave a short talk on the environment, trying to get as much participation as I could, and then a group discussion followed on the subject. Each school was asked to do one environmental project in the next month, whether it be to plant trees or clean up an area in their village. When the camp was over we walked back through the jungle and the boys scrambled up trees, being teased for their monkey-like skills, and hung up Future Club signs asking people to take care of the environment, not to leave plastic behind, etc.

In the evening I was invited to dinner with some of the Future Generations staff, but before that we stopped at their little craft stall in Ziro which was set up by the Village Womens Workers Self-help group, where jewellery, woven scarves and shawls as well as handmade bamboo and cane baskets were sold and the proceeds went to the villagers who had made them. I gave them a few suggestions I felt would help them appeal to tourists.

- Dave