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Myanmar: Day 1 in Yangon for Play for Peace Training

The group of teachers also agreed that the Play for Peace games can be played during school’s physical education period as well as for classroom teaching to make lessons more interesting!

After the success of last year’s Play for Peace sessions in Myanmar, we are back to conducting more workshops and being touched by their stories. Our first full-day session was in Yangon where Swati Bhatt and Agyat Shunya were there to teach monastic school teachers how to integrate Play for Peace’s Practice Peace Sessions in their classroom teaching as well as have fun with children in the local communities. The day started with 31 participants engaged in a 45-minute practice peace session.  After which, the participants organized themselves into small groups and discussed what they liked about the session. The range of emotions and capabilities was interesting. Some talked about stress relief, healing, and an increase in comfort and intimacy, while others mentioned the increase in concentration, focus, and listening. Conversation and sharing are an integral part of these sessions.

One of the participants wanted to know how the idea of Play for Peace was born while another wanted to know if it is possible to include people with disabilities (yes it is! It is best to work with the participants with disabilities about how to modify games to meet their needs). After a few more games and lunch, the group played an activity to bring consciousness to the issue of “Peace and Violence” and how they perceived it. After doing a word web for both “Peace” and “Violence”, the participants divided themselves into 6 groups and were given old newspapers and glue. They were then asked to create their newspaper by cutting headlines and pictures that they perceived as either peaceful or violent.

After discussing everyone’s newspapers, the group shared their personal stories where they experienced or witnessed peace and violence. Reflecting on the activity, the participants said how they normally don't pay attention to news stories from a peace and violence perspective and the exercise increased their awareness. They also noted that their experiences with peace and violence are not always reflected in the newspaper stories. At the end of the day, the participants were asked to share what had been of value. One of the monk teachers mentioned that the peace and violence newspaper exercise can be very useful for children in orphanages as they have experienced a lot of trauma. They also learned that everyone can be a leader and that it is better to support people when they make a mistake rather than punish them.

The group of teachers also agreed that the Play for Peace games can be played during the school’s physical education period as well as for classroom teaching to make lessons more interesting.  

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