A LEARNING REFLECTION OF IMCS SUMMER SCHOOL 2017

The International Summer Camp’17 organized by IMCS, was held in Flores Ende, Indonesia from 7^th to 17^th of July 2017. Being one of my first International exposure, I was excited about the camp, where I could meet people from other places of the world and share a dialogue with them.

Never enough words to could be framed about the beauty of the island-Flores. As well as the traditional warm welcome from the gates of Kupang to our last destination Labuan Bajo. The Indonesians enthralled a feeling of love, kindness and brotherly warmth. The training sessions were indeed insightful, from which we could share a lot of input and all the participants took active part in all group discussions and exposures which were being organized. The camp included training about Human Rights and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

SDG 4 which was Quality of education: We were given the task of building a local high school and also for painting it. Whereas, on SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation: We were taken across for field visits to engage with the local community to learn about their water sources and help raise awareness on the waste crisis and recycling. On SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth: We had to visit a small village where the victims of human trafficking resided. We acknowledged their experiences and studied them so we could use these case studies to advocate and give a hand in preventing this from happening in the future. The best example which I witnessed was the exchange interfaith dialogue between Catholics and Muslims by taking part in building the local mosque to promote peace among the locals of the island.

Being a part of the media commission I was able to imbibe few skills such as photography. As media is the tool used for communicating among people living in different parts of the world. Therefore, during the training programme Social Media’s like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram were used as a medium to share what’s happening in the summer school.

Cultural night was one of the most gala event of the Summer School as various cultures were being represented on stage! Participants from various countries were dressed in their traditional attire. Meanwhile we got to see different dance forms of Indonesian culture. The tunes of the song ‘Mogie’ still echo in my head.

I believe future is in the hands of the youth and youth have the capacity to bring the change in the society keeping in mind solidarity among them and youth can promote peace and harmony in the society.

As our friend Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt says, “We cannot always build the future for our youth, But We can build our youth for the future.”

ALIDA RODRIGUES
AICUF-INDIA