EMPOWER.

EMPOWER

It feels like forever since I last blogged.

Anyway.

The EMPOWER Workshop finally happened.This workshop happened last Saturday and is actually and hopefully one of the many workshops that EMPOWER will be organizing. The whole purpose of EMPOWER speaks for itself, to empower youth to become agents of change.

Inspiring is one thing, but to empower, it lasts long, it motivates and enables people to actually DO something, to pay it forward and not just to sit around and think “Wow, that was a great workshop. It really made me think.” , but to actually empower youth to be a part of change.I was actually really amazed at the turn out. I didn’t expect to see so many people but I was so glad that these youth came, it really made me happy inside :) The main facilitator that day was Fiona, who works for United Nations and has facilitated many of these workshops before.

The theme last Saturday was “Self Esteem”.

One of the activities that we did was called “Shopping Spree”.

We made believe four stalls.
One of which I “owned” :)

We had stickers that stated characteristics of people like fat,short,casual,sporty,pimply,plain,sexy,pretty, etc. We stuck these stickers onto each participant’s forehead without them knowing what was said on the stickers. So, they had no clue what kind of person they were, they just had to go with the flow. The participants would go to each shop and the owner of the shops would treat each person according to what is stated on the sticker. At the end of the game, the participants would attempt to guess what kind of person they were. Then, we talked about how different people get treated based on their physical attributes.

Then we had an activity that broke the group into two different groups and just discussed about self esteem. I saw a few people from school that came for the workshop, and some of them were very outspoken about the types of peer pressure we face in school, the way certain people get judged just because they might be a little different from the norm, how some people feel the need to be a certain way just to fit into the mould that society creates.

But then, in the end, it was nice to see how everyone began to realize that there is no reason to constantly please society but to be happy with yourself and if you’re happy with who you are, then you shouldn’t have the need to follow what society asks of you to do. The last activity was a Pay It Forward activity. Like I said earlier, this workshop isn’t only to inspire but to empower these young bright youth to become agents of change, to become the driving force of the transformation of society.

Just a few from the many photos :

Overall, it was a good, productive, insightful, energizing and empowering day.
I’ll post up the dates for the next workshops(hopefully!) next time.

Do come! :)