Lately I have been intrigued by an international non-profit called
Play For Peace and am collaborating with them to better understand their process and platform for reaching disadvantaged youth.
I had done a team building event with Craig Dobkin, one of the founders, in early July of this year when I moved to Boulder Colorado. Craig is an amazing individual - and over the next few months I learned about his work with his non-profit and I have been fascinated with the premise, scope and reach.
The ultimate goal of PFP is to create peacemakers, to make the world a better place. Simple. Yet it has catapulted me into a larger world - the real world. Of conflict, conflict resolution, DDR (disarmament, demobilization and reintegration), PTSD, the power of laughter and play. It has offered me glimpses into individuals lives that have dedicated themselves to this "simple" goal.
I have just scratched the surface I know... Pulled a handle of a door and am peering in through a crack into Senegal, India, Kashmir, Guatemala, the West Bank, Philippines, Haiti, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver... Please, feel free to peer in with me...
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Voices of Play For Peace
©Bennett Barthelemy
The following are the shared voices from interviews with
participants at the Play For Peace pre-workshop at the Association for Experiential
Education conference in Denver on October 30, 2013. The interviews, conducted
with both PFP community members and those that were newer to the ideas of the
non-profit, were aimed at gaining a sense of the passion that these people
bring to their work with children and to get a better sense of how Play For
Peace activities are working within the varied organizations that the
individuals work with.
The focus of the workshop, facilitated by Play For Peace co-founder
Craig Dobkin and executive director Sarah Gough, was an experiment with unstructured play. The goal: To help foster the co-creation of ideas and
tools to better serve the varied populations that the diverse group of
attendees work with - throughout the US and the world…
One
of our guiding beliefs is that every community has the resources they need to
be peacemakers and to do Play For Peace activities. We are just sharing a tool
that we think works - and we are sharing our community for people who want to
be part of PFP - for motivation, inspiration, for the knowledge exchange. But
that’s all you really need. -Sarah Gough, Executive Direct PFP
1. Chaun
– Chicago. PFP since high school in 1997. Used PFP activities with local
community centers in Chicago after 9/11 as an intervention to help his
neighborhood stay peaceful as things began erupting into mayhem. It worked.
“With PFP I have seen kids,
teenagers that didn’t have a voice before, whether it’s in their school, with
their community or friends – Get a voice. Confidence grows. Shy kids learn to
be more confident. Kids that didn’t think they could go to school, or go to
college or achieve anything because their environment has always taught them
they can’t and you won’t, go on to graduate college and start or work for other
programs doing things that they learned from us. That’s the beautiful part
about it – Seeing somebody that you helped, doing what you did for them, now
doing it for other students. That’s beautiful.”
2. Lorenzo
– He works with Project Voyce. Uses his boxing and martial arts training as a
tool to reach kids in a non-violent way. He struggles with how best to blend both
traditional and non-traditional learning styles (classroom vs. active). This is
the subject of his current masters.
“I work for Project Voyce in the greater
Denver area and we focus on leadership, youth development and some education
reform. We use PFP techniques because we do a lot of activity-based learning
and engage the students. After we run an activity and have fun, laugh,
challenge and sometimes frustrate them – we then take that and transfer that
learning and say, ‘how can you take what you just learned and apply it to your
real life?’”
“We like to create a very positive
environment and typically when kids experience a group of people that are
supportive and aren’t going to judge you their mindsets and perspectives on the
world can change. Sometimes they come in feeling the world is a pretty cruel
one, you cant trust anyone. So positive things just happen because they learn
there are people you can trust and that will support you. It motivates them to
do better in school and improve their relationship with their family and
peers.”
3. Loren
– Runs a youth center in Los Angeles that serves underserved kids.
“I met John and Craig a little over a year
ago when they came to me and the center in Los Angeles and introduced the idea
of PFP and it seemed like a great fit for what I was trying to do there with
leadership, peer mentoring and experiential learning. I was struggling a bit
with how to engage the older students with helping the younger students - with
that peer-mentoring piece. I had a couple of things in place but this just sang
to me and I thought Ok, this is it. This
is what we do it: Teach them how to facilitate experiential learning games.”
4. Sam
and Sarah – Multiple trips to India where PFP has been active for over a
decade. Together they raised 8 foster children. They just travelled 10 months
in India from the southern end to the Tibet border. In Kashmir, which is very
war torn - the couple was hearing from local facilitators there that PFP was
helping kids “relax”.
Sarah- “India in general has taught
me the value of interdependence. I think in our culture we place a high value
on false independence.”
5. John
and Anbern – Working together in Cebu in the Philippines and experiencing new
ways PFP is being used to help displaced minority groups i.e the Bajao Tribe… John has
been with PFP since its inception and is newly married to Anbern – they met
through PFP.
John- “PFP was an extension of what
I was doing with special needs groups. You go there and improvise it. Look at
where the needs were and help them to be self-sufficient and build a better
community for them.”
6. Curt
– Denver Parks and Rec employee –Says the mayor is an ally and very
kid-centric. He believes that Denver is paving the way in the realm of youth
advocacy with its forward-thinking programs for youth.
“We have 24 recreation centers in Denver and
launched a program last year called My
Denver. All kids can come to the rec centers for free, use the libraries
for free and soon ride all the rapid transit in the city for free. We do youth
programs and PFP fits right in there beautifully. All the data shows that kids
who are involved in after school programs have really high success rates, test
scores go up, graduation rates go up…”
7. Sir
– Project Voyce teacher/mentor. Craig has come and done trainings with Sir and
Project Voyce – activities that they incorporate into Project Voyce summer
programs to co-create and meet the specific needs of the population Project
Voyce serves – inner-city, underserved and minority youth.
“It’s pretty much a long story but to cut it
short - Craig, Craig Dobkin. He is very interesting kind of guy. I like the way
he presents himself. When I see him and he does workshops its kind of a fun,
ha-ha kind of moment, very improvised kind of spur of the moment depending on
what’s going on. And that’s kind of how I am when I am in front of the
classroom. I will have a lesson plan in my mind but a lot of the time I just
kind of observe what is going on and just go from there, improvise, wing it.
Nowadays I like to wing it with a purpose. I am interested in this workshop
because it will give me different tools and ideas to look at for teaching our
summer leadership program in schools all across Denver. Each school is different
depending on the students there, the leaders there, the size of the class - so
each one presents a new challenge.”
8. Craig
– Everybody’s invited, everybody wins
- is the catchphrase he currently likes for PFP. Craig has some four decades of
working with incredibly diverse populations and helping found several
non-profits aimed at serving youth. PFP was his first international non-profit
he helped birth in 1996 with the goal of creating peacemakers in communities of
conflict around the globe.
“We are adding new countries with different
cultures and different conflicts so our learning curve is extremely high. For
the kids we serve it would be nice if they could go home with something they
learned that they can share with their families, which brings peace to their
family. They can be the facilitators, the coaches, the teachers, the mentors.
And we try to do that but we need to do a better job. Just simple activities
that bring awe and surprise. ‘Wow, how do you do that? You can do it and I
can’t. Can you teach me?’”
“We would like PFP to go into schools and
look at education and curriculum to help kids with reading and writing
comprehension. We have a lot of activities around these things.”
“When I look back what surprises me is how
American we were in the beginning. We were brutal. We would go into countries;
Bosnia, Serbia, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip - The other co founder and
I did a tour – and we were selling a product they didn’t want. We didn’t ask
them what their needs were – we just forgot. We were very naive. At the end of
that trip when we reflected we were just laughing. What were they thinking when
we went through our dog and pony show and then asking and NGO for $250,000 when
they had never seen us before? We needed to connect and create relationships
and show that we were sustainable and in it for the long haul.”
9. Sarah,
Executive Director of PFP – Self-proclaimed onductor of the orchestra (700
volunteers in 20 countries and growing), from a tiny village of 600 in
Guatemala. Sarah started as a volunteer by coming to Guatemala 2000. Her
husband is a Guatemalan and her daughter was brought up in PFP activities since
she was just three weeks old. Sarah, who has an advanced degree in social work,
was instrumental in helping establish PFP training that has been required of
every social worker graduate from the Guatemala university system since circa
2006.
“One challenge certainly is trying to focus
my time and energy on the projects that will most bring energy to the community
and bring more resources to the community and help us grow and be a dynamic and
thriving organization. I love the one on one interaction – to Skype, email and
interact and to see all the amazing people that you have started to meet. So it
is always a kind of balancing act then with looking for funds, making sure we
know the technology part and building our website with the marketing and all of
that, so we can be a thriving community. I think it is the community that
brings me energy and it’s my job to just be a really good conductor of the
orchestra. I have wonderful volunteers from all over the world who volunteer
and do pro bono work whether its translation, graphic design, writing… those
that not only do PFP but also those that just want a more peaceful world.”
“What we have realized over the
years is that PFP has had impacts in many ways we never imagined in the
beginning and we are still learning new ways. Where it has never been PFP
explicit intention to go to communities to help after a natural disaster, or
displacement after war - or whatever
reason, people from our community are caring, committed people and when they
hear about these different tragedies they go and help. So what has happened is
from our PFP community members going in to refugee camps and going to work with
kids after natural disasters – earthquakes, tsunamis, mudslides, hurricanes –
is that the impact of creating a space for play for children, having them
laugh, connect with themselves and others in their community has been very
powerful. PFP are not necessarily trained therapists. But the stories that the
parents share with us are that I haven’t
seen my child smile since we have been at the shelter, until now. This
speaks volumes about how they can get through the next day…”
All Images ©Bennett Barthelemy
