Aims, Process and achievements of the Spritivity Workshop
Aims
The aim of the Spritivity workshop with the girls was to make them comfortable expressing themselves, rather than striving constantly to gain someone else’s approval or acceptance. They were being trained to realize their own potential and that what matters the most is what they think about themselves, not what others think about them.
Process
The best moment in the project was the reaction of the girls when they saw the photos that they had clicked. None of them had held a camera before and were very shy at first. But once they got it, they ran around excitedly taking photos. Then they were unsure of the quality of photos they had clicked and shy about sharing them publicly. But once the photos had been shown to them,
they could not wait to have the photos printed and show everyone that they had clicked the photos alone with no help from anyone.
Then the girls created Sprites and stories using those sprites. Each story is embedded within the subjective reality of each girl and conveys her unique perspective on her situation. They went through each phase of the problem solving process, embedded within their cultural and contextual reality, till they themselves formulated an action plan.
Click here for details of the stages in this process
Achievements
Through this process, the girls were able to identify their key concerns about the mentorship programme, the main stakeholders and their roles in the girls’ journey, their expectations from the programme and eventually, their strategy to gain maximum from the mentoring experience. They gained clarity about their own goals and devised a strategy that identified potential time-lines, mile-stones and action plan to achieve the final goal. The mentorship programme emerged as an opportunity to take the first steps towards their goals. Prior to the workshop, the girls had shown limited understanding of the programme and were operating from a compliant, passive mindset rather than a critical, proactive approach that they adopted after the workshop.
Spritivity Workshop for the mentors
Since the idea is to provide non-institutional therapeutic intervention to socially excluded populations, I designed a Spritivity workshop for the Mentors as well. In this workshop, the narratives from the previous workshop done with the girls were shared with their mentors. This workshop was designed to incorporate the mentorship experience as the personal project for each of the mentors this time. The underpinning idea was that the narratives can be used as an effective medium for intervention by the mentors, and during the Spritivity workshop, the mentors will also be able to reflect upon it and come up with better informed, mentee-centered strategies for intervention.
Click here for details of the Workshop for Mentors