Well everyone, you Soliya journey is drawing to a close now. I hope that it has been a positive experience for you, judging from your diaries and text chats I would certainly say so. For this week think about the last questions you want to ask members in your group, or anything else you might want to say to them, what you've appreciated, what you found difficult, and of course what you've learnt. This is also the week when you will probably discuss future projects, what can be done to improve relations, to make change happen, to improve communications not only between you as group members, but in your wider communities, how you can share what you've learnt with others. You will also be invited to think about if and how you might want to continue to engage with the Soliya community.
Our meeting is on Friday 7th December, in aula P, in via del Santo at 12.30. I'll bring my computer so we can also watch and comment on your videos. If you have not already done so please confirm if you will be coming or not.
Francesca
Our meeting is on Friday 7th December, in aula P, in via del Santo at 12.30. I'll bring my computer so we can also watch and comment on your videos. If you have not already done so please confirm if you will be coming or not.
Francesca
hello everybody,
RispondiEliminafirstly i would like to confirm my presence to our meeting this friday.
i just finished my last session and it was a bit sad say goodbye to everybody, but we share our e-mail and facebook contacts, i hope to stay in touch with my group!
Today the topic was the abortion, and we had a really animated discussion. All the guys from the east share the same position, thaey are against it. But i think it had been so difficult for them to answer about mine and others with abortion provocations, like what if you know if you're baby is going to born with a serious disease or knid of problem? why if in the future your daughter would be rape and become pregnant?
I think that for a person who is the position against abortion these kind of question make their answer so difficult and their justifications with no sense, in fact at the end they 'changed' their ideas and we were all agree saying that abortion could be possible in some situations : /
I really appreciate this topic even because we were all so interested in it.
Then our facilitators make us a very funny joke! they asked us a series of question for which we had to answer with a name of one person of the group, the question were like Type the name of someone who made you laugh, Type the name of someone who you learned from, Type the name of someone who you respect- even if you don’t always agree ... I do like it!
Last part of the session was about our experience with Soliya, how we like it and what we appreciate more.
I'm really happy to have had the possibility to partecipate at this project, I will share it with my friends and suggest it to my mate who will have the possibility to join it.
At the end, really sad to say goodbye to everybody, i didn't expect it :-)
Hi guys!
RispondiEliminaHow are you? I’m fine and very happy! My group and I closed the last meeting in a wonderful way! So I’m very satisfied about what we said and how we showed our happiness for participating in the program!
We started the last Soliya’s session checking our sound properly and telling what we did during the weekend. After that, the facilitator opened the debate and the argument was the terrorism.
We said a lot of things about what the word means, what it remembers to us and how the phenomenon is described by the news and the politics.
We talked about the relationship between West and East and - in specific – we promoted new ideas to improve their connection. For example I think that there should be friendship and a common relationship between two neighbours without any by-end. The governments should not have interests in the oil-wells, or in the arms trafficking or to built new military bases.
While we were talking, the American boy and the Pakistan boy chatted in the main box about what the USA has made in these years in the Arabic region. They were very involved and the facilitators reminded them that we have to respect the point of view of each one and to be patient and correct!
At the end of the discussion, the facilitators asked a lot of questions to us, to sum up what we did in these sessions and to make a balance of our mates. Just to have an example, they asked to type the name of someone who you respect in the group, the name of someone whose comments you appreciated, the name of someone who made you feel understood and so on.
Most of the time, the answers were kind but someone showed partialities and discriminations. I think this is not a mature behaviour.
Finally we interchanged our Skype or Facebook’s address and we said goodbye to everybody. It was so friendly. We thanked everyone and that’s the end of the Soliya program. =(
See you on Friday,
Monica
December, 5th 2012
RispondiEliminaHere we go!
Today I had my last session with my Soliya’s group.
It was a weird session: we started as usual, talking about the topic Nati and Ayunda, the facilitators, suggested us and from that we went on talking about it. We shared ideas and opinions about international culture, stereotypes, the future of relationships between Muslim and Western worlds, differences, acceptance and so on. I’m not saying that what we talked about is of no importance. But we could feel we were focusing in something else.
We were focusing on us. We could clearly see only our group, a bunch of people, and all the rest of the world was in the background. We were pretty aware that this was our last session- our last assured time to stay and talk all together.
Nati and Ayunda made us some questions about group dynamics; we had to answer to some question with the name of the first person in the group that best identified with the idea expressed in the question. That was a though activity. I almost never could come down with the name of just one person, I usually at least two or three in mind.
In the end, there was the greetings part. It was.. not sad really. Only weird. It seemed we were aware of the “separation” but we couldn’t face it, so we kept denying it, pretending we’d meet again in a week.
We actually agree to keep in touch and to create a group in Facebook to make this easier. We all would like to meet each other, and this is likely to happen since Deborah and Chris have planned to come to Europe on the next future. Abdellatif doesn’t live so far away, too.
I’m positive we’ll meet again, rather soon, I have no idea where.
I’m also positive I’ll miss them all.
This was an experience that broadened the walls of my room, of my mind and of my heart.
Thank you, Soliya.
Cla
RispondiEliminaHello,
I just finished my 8th and final meeting on Soliya and I feel really sad, I still think that next Thursday I'm going to meet al my mates in our main room.
This experience was a great one, I learnt really much from it and I would like to do it again in the near future if it would be possible. Through this program I had the possibility to cooperate with other people, and I realized that although the different cultural backgrounds we are really similar, and I have found some real and precious friends that I hope I will meet one day in real life.
Today's meeting was a really nice one, we talked about our progress as a group, we asked and focused on the topics we were interested most and we really expressed our thoughts covering a wide range of topics. I think that this final meeting was really a " touching" one because we were all aware that unfortunately it would be the final one.
However in this meeting we particularly focused on the role of women in society,on the vail and on its importance, we also discussed about some possible ways in spreading dialogue across the world.
How I have said before this was really an amazing experience and I will keep it in my heart forever.
Hi everybody!
RispondiEliminaOn TUesday I had my last soliya session, it has been really wierd to say goodbye to my group, we were all a bit disoriented, while we were realizing all together that we won't have any meeting again; anyway we have already created a facebook group where I hope to keep in touch with all the memebers of the group.
Sushmita (one of our facilitators) was absent beacause she gave brith to her baby just few days before and so it was impossible for her to join us, leaving the baby for more than two hours; it was a pity not to say goodbye to her,but we were all so happy for this great news!
TAlking about the content of the meeting, fist we discussed the situation of immigrants in our countries, in particular we tried to compare the treatemente muslim immigrants have in Western countries, whit the treatement of westeners in muslim coutries, it has been really helpfull to listen to the experience of Walker, a guy from the US that is currently living in the Emirates, he told us that he has been treated in a sharply different manner respect to other immigrants because he is from the US, but otherwise all the other immigrants do not recieve an equal treatement and they are considered second class citizens; it was interesting to note that muslim countries are more likely to be the destination of other muslim citizen or anyway of citizens coming from neighbouring regions or nations, and not the destination of Westeners immigrants. We remained on the topic of immigration asking ourselves how much people from different countries can be discriminate in their new host nation, and we saw that finally it's ignorace the problem that causes a lot of tensions among the citizens of a coutnry and the newcomers.
Then we moved to another issue and Mila (the other facilitator) asked us as series of questions about our hopes and our vision of muslim/westerners relationship and their possible changement in ten years and we tried to figure out some possible tools that could improve and, in some contests, change the relationships between the 2 different cultures, like this programm, or some exchangement in politcs.
Finally we pased to some easy questions about the group and about ourselves and with this last exchange of information we said goodbye to everybody!
I want to thank everybody becaue this has been an incredible experinece that gave me some greatopportunities to discover new things and to deepn the knoledge of different cultures.
Bye
Anna
my VP webpage address:
RispondiEliminahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5blFKpokhqo
GIADA ZANELLA, MY LAST WEEK AT SOLIYA
RispondiEliminaThis is going to be (unfortunately) my last diary about the Soliya program sessions.
We started the session writing in the chat box the questions we had been thinking about: they could be about anything we’d like, as long as everybody from the group could answer them and so join the conversation, because we really didn’t want anyone to be left out.
I asked about stereotypes, media and cultures, as I wanted to know if something changed since we began the program, and as I expected, they did indeed! We drew our conclusions on these topics, saying that the best way to keep ourselves informed is probably the internet, since you can get a lot of information from different sources, thus being able to compare them. Moreover, you can get personal points of view of people directly involved or living in those countries.
As for stereotypes (I think this is the topic we talked about most), we realized that our view on the other members culture is definitely changed, especially in the relationship between Americans and Muslims. Honestly, my view is changed as well, but I felt like I was caught in the middle between these two worlds. I feel deeply European, though the girls from Egypt used to talk about Italy as it was some kind of US peninsula. And I said “used to talk” because I’ve always tried to make it crystal clear that it was not so, though there are close political relationships, and in the end my message has been heard
I’ve heard their message as well: now I can say I understand their culture and religion deeper, though we still don’t agree on everything (but this was not the aim of the project, was it?). Plus, I was touched but the fact that they’ve always been keen to make their point of view understood in a respectful and peaceful way. What I’ve learned from them is that anytime I listen to/watch/hear the news, or somebody talking, if I don’t understand something I should look for explanations actively. I should care about what’s going on around me, and not just close my eyes and pretend it’s not happening. I should, and I will. But I don’t want to write my reflections now, since I’ll do it in the final essay.
We also talked about globalization, and the naïve expectations we had (or we were convinced to have) about it, before it revealed the other side of the coin. Of course, there are pros and cons for everything, and we listed both of them, noticing that cons are more common in developing countries rather than in the already developed ones. I think that the most important innovation globalization has brought is the connection among people from all over the world: thanks to it, we can know almost everything that’s happening on the other hemisphere, and then commit ourselves to help them or not. It’s up to us whether globalization will be used towards peace and progress.
(continues)
EliminaFinally, we reflected on how we can keep the core of this program going on, both individually and in broader communities. First of all, I’ll talk about it to anybody who might be interested in it, especially to my university colleagues and my friends (already begun..). Then I will keep in touch with the other members, in fact we already added each other’s contact on Facebook and Julie is going to create a page for us and any friends of us who would like to join. The facilitators told us that we can use the meeting rooms if they’re free, thus we could meet once a month or so, wherever we are. In the Facebook page, we’ll share articles, news, stories, even personal ones, and keep discussing about West-East relationship. I’d really like to travel to the Middle East and meet Ameera, Yousra and Maher. By the way, I’m so sorry I couldn’t talk to Maher more often, since he always had connection problems, and to Ameera in this last session, always due to technical problems.
Overall, I’m really sad this has come to an end. I’ll miss Thursday meetings, though they were sometimes challenging and demanding. I was quite exhausted after every session, but satisfied, because I always felt enriched, I do feel enriched. As soon as possible, I’ll write my final essay, where I’ll put my reflections, feelings and conclusions, because here I wouldn’t do them justice.