SALT VISIT with Miss Guyana African Queen Pageant Delegates

[Shabakie Fernandes]

The Guyana Faith-and HIV Coalition along with Group 2 in support of the Community Life Competence process as a mean of stimulating local response and ownership by communities did a workshop with the Miss Guyana African queen Pageant delegates to stimulate their WOT and WOW towards their concerns using their strengths.

In terms of introduction of participants we used “ I am like this food …..  because …..” to stimulate their feelings towards the workshop and helped participants to feel comfortable, relaxed and a part of a community that knows each other. The following exercises were accomplished:

 

Exercise 1 - Identifying Strengths

 

Exercise 2 – Dream Building

 

Exercise 3 – Reflection

 

Exercise 1

 

Identifying Strengths

There were 12 participants and they were placed into three groups to do this exercise. We did this exercise to help with identify strengths the group as contestants and coordinators might have. Each group selected clippings from old magazines and from a discussion within each group, identify strengths from the clipping. Afterwards the participants discussed as a team if the strengths applied to them in the environment they operated. 

 

Exercise 2 - Dream Building 

 

In this exercise participants did individual as well as group dreams. The basis of the dream was that since this year was earmarked the year of “People of African descent” what will the world be like if ALL that was planned for this year was achieved? Each participant was given a piece of heart shaped paper and asked to describe their individual dream. Having done that, they went back to their respective group and discussed each individual dream which would culminate into a group dream, by integration of the individual dreams. Each group was asked to represent the group dream in a drawing.

 

The general dream was that: “People of the world unite as one human race and benefit from the resources therein so that ALL peoples live in comfort and dignity.”

 

Exercise 3

 

Reflection

 

In the Reflection, the coordinators express immense appreciation for the SALT visit and indicate that they too benefited from the interaction. They were better able to understand some of the contestants more personally. They foresee better interaction between them as well.

 

[Gaston]

Wonderful and such a great general dream. Fascinating. And the network you can tap into for SALT visits is so vast! Your team can really have a great impact and reveal many community strengths leading to sustainable local responses. Thank you for sharing all this. 

[Naomi Singh]

Dear Shabakie,
As I was reading your report on this SALT visit I was reminding myslef how very important it is for us to identify our strengths. Important because we generally don't think in terms of strengths as sometimes all we seem to see are the lacks, lapses and gaps that exist. My very science-oriented son told me the other night, "Mommy, even an empty space is not empty. It is filled with millions of particles of matter even if we don't see them with the naked eye!" So yes, we each have strengths, even though some may not be visible right away. We can also work at developing more... So thank you for reminding me of this. Keep up the good work, you and your team.