Video – Lessons Learned in Experiential Education for Humanitarian Action

Good morning. Before I start my official  remarks. And with pleasure. Um. I’m going to  digress just for a minute. And recognize what’s  going on around the world. And I don’t want to  make people uncomfortable, but, I realize as an  American going overseas presenting at conferences,  there are other Americans that are in this room  kind of acknowledging the reality of what we are  dealing with today is important. The last time  I was in Scandinavia. I was actually spoke at  Uppsala University in 2003, which may pre-date the  birth of something like the University of Tartu  at the time. And I remember when I was in Estonia,  this was after 911. There was a lot of recognition  of what the United States had experienced and the  world had experienced. in September 2001. Now,  22 years later, we are experiencing  something very different than that. And,  um. It is. It was amazing. Disturbing, troubling  that decisions that come from one person,  one administration can really upset the world  order. We have to recognize that so much is   going on, so much turbulence. Much of my  work focuses on international development  and conflict resolution. And as many of you  in this room are graduate students dealing  with the challenges of being graduate students.  you sit in Washington, D.C., and a program where  many of my students aspire to do global peace  building and to work for agencies like USF.I want to start by apologizing on behalf  of the American people, at least happily,   American people. I don’t know if I’m representing.  But I think often Americans travel overseas with  a sense of hubris. That’s not the case now. So  humility now is important and recognizing what  we’re dealing with and that it is upsetting  and challenging everyone in this room,  some in ways you might not even recognize. I  was at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm last week,  and I was struck by going to the museum and  the embarrassment taking place. But what?  It struck me also that Americans might not be  participating and might not have Nobel laureates,  particularly in the sciences, because grants  are being decimated in the sciences in the  United States. And I am a Fulbright scholar,  and the entire U.S. Fulbright Scholarship board  resigned yesterday. And apparently there were  recommendations made by the Norwegian Fulbright  Commission for Fulbright grantees that were  changed by the U.S. State Department. So much  going on that it’s really it’s really hard  to focus on one particular thing that there  interests of things that I’m interested in. So  while I apologize, I ask for everyone’s help.  I asked for you to recognize the things  that are happening in the United States.We have to acknowledge what’s going on. This  week we’re dealing with the book end of. Upset  disturbance. Non-Violent protests have been  perceived differently in Los Angeles at the same  time on Saturday. I’m glad to be in Scandinavia  on Saturday, where we’re going to have the first  time in many, many years a military parade in  Washington. I come from Washington, D.C., I was  very pleased and very happy that we celebrated  world pride in Washington this year. That was   a breath of fresh air. It was wonderful to see  that. So looking for the positive things that are  going on in America is really important right now.  But let’s not fool ourselves. There’s work to be  done and it’s going to be challenging. Hopefully  we’re all in this together. Even those of you who   are not in the peace and conflict field, such as  myself, those of you who are in fields that really  we’re all trying to make a better world, we’re  trying to connect people with each other. We’re  trying to create peace and global understanding.  We need to continue to do that. But what this is  going to bring is creativity than we’ve required  in a long time. And I see a lot of creativity in  this room. So the ways that we’re going to be  connecting with each other and working often to  get around things and to continue to do the good  work is going to be really important. So I thank  you and I appreciate all that you’re doing. and  I look forward to continue to work with you. And,  you know, hope springs eternal. Hopefully things  will improve over time. So thank you. Okay,  let me, talk a little bit about my  work and the work of the Center for  Peacebuilding Humanitarian Education. And, I  have subtitles here. Fake it till you make it.There’s always a workaround.  Take it till you make it. one of the things that  struck me about the work that I do and the work  that I do in the Forage Center and the work  that I do with experience education, because   we’re all in the experiential education business.  Sometimes we don’t recognize that we are. Is that,  often, the process of engaging in something and  participating in something that may or may not  be enthusiastic about, but we enjoy sometimes is  a bit uncomfortable, which is really essential  to learning, actually transforms our identity,  transforms who we are as friends, what we want to  do. So this idea of faking til you make it in the  sense really is kind of cutting to the core of,  of at least. And what I think is role playing  is that you’re brought into a situation that  may or may not be enthusiastic about, but here  you are. And through that process of doing it,  it changes you in some way. So let’s talk about  that in the context of the work that I do. This   is just a definition from actually it’s wonderful  academic highbrow resource Wikipedia. So I hammer.Idea of faking it till you make it. If you  think about it a little bit, if you think about   the things that you’ve done often there’s some  science behind that, but I won’t go into that.  Kind of where I start. The work that I do is John  Dewey, and I, probably most of you in this room,   recognize that John Dewey is the father of  experiential learning. And it’s experience  with reflection that actually is the  core of learning. And this, in a sense,   is anathema. We’re doing PowerPoint. This is not  the best way of all right. So that’s what you do  either. Right. You learn by getting people  to engage and to do things. The experience  is necessary in conferences, but this idea of  engaging and doing something changes who you  are. Typically the chance to sit on the outside  and think about how that has happened to you.What do we do at the Forage Center?. There is  this idea of role playing as a professional,  but in a sense, what students do, where they’re  coming into a situation where they’re taking on an   identity as a professional, an NGO member charged  with being deployed to a conflict, a disastrous  situation where they have to accomplish certain  ends, then the opportunity to reflect on that  afterwards. That’s the transformation. Developing  and acquiring new skin skills and identity. So let  me talk about the Ford Center a bit. So. We’re  an American not for profit. We are based outside  of Washington, DC. We’ve been operating for. Ten  years, but the work I’ve been doing is 20 years  long. Based on a colleague named Paul Forge passed  away about ten years ago. And what I mean is maybe  not young chronologically, but young education  graduate students, undergraduate students who  aspire. To work in crisis. To want to go work in  South Sudan. To work for medicines on prompt here.  To work in a civil war to to go to Gaza. You  can go to Gaza right now. Can’t ask you to get  into Gaza. Who wants to do that but really have no  sense of what that is like. And often the idealism  that we have drives us to want to do something,  but we really don’t know the consequences of what  that is. I don’t know. Many of my graduate  students have had experience sleeping under  mosquito netting and taking malaria pills for  an extended time. And I wonder, in this room,  many of you had that experience that you want  to do this type of work. You’re going to have to   recognize that. So we realized that what we had  to do is create something that created a pseudo  experience, if you will, something that students  could experience and could be in that space for a   period of time as this work, or with other people  also role playing to accomplish certain things.  These are just photographs from our exercise and  we do some debriefing at the end. Reflection.  This is at our site. this is meeting with an  NGO. I’m going to kind of go quickly through  some of this. We also take our students at  night. So one of the things that you’ve done,  immersive experiences in a role playing  situation, if it’s continuing with the  way this set is continued, is over 72 hours  continuous doesn’t mean 2:00 in the morning.  And so, students are not going to a hotel  at night and checking out, checking back   in your enrollment type, which, in fact, we take  students cell phones away. They’re in comunicado,  which is really important for a roll plan, in a  sense, to be in that space. And those of you who   do LA probably recognize you have to be in that  space. The rest of the world has to be shut off.  Others. That’s important to us as well. Of course,  in anything there’s a bit of exhaustion. There’s  just a little bit more about the trajectory of the  fellows. This is their board. One of the things  that we recognize and work that we do on the go  through kind of our exercise is that. The need for  people to work in humanitarian conflicts has never  been greater. Right? There are some 165 million  displaced people around the world, of which the  majority are internally displaced IDPs versus  refugees versus those people are seeking. And,  you know, we often kind of bring all these people   together migrating, often forced or migrating  because their own needs are somewhere else. That  number will continue. That number will explode,  probably over the coming years. And of course,  as Europeans have been closely following both  calls on Ukraine, recognizing the large number of,  I think 5 million people are displaced in Ukraine.  Everyone is displaced in Gaza. and people who are  displaced if they’re internally displaced or  displaced within their country borders. It’s   different from being a refugee when you cross the  border. But many of those refugees end up in your  communities. They find their way wherever you are,  and they start a new life where you are. And I   would suggest maybe some of you are descendants of  people who were forcibly displaced and developed.  So the need is great and the need will continue.  We recognize, notwithstanding what’s going on  around the world, notwithstanding the fact that  the international development field has from the  standpoint of Americans, but really much of the  world has been completely undermined, that that  doesn’t take away the need which will continue.  It just is going to be harder to do the work.And humanitarian workers. Those of you who know  something of this recognize the big humanitarian   work to work in a conflict zone. It is risky.  It’s always been risky. But this time in our  story that in conflicts, people who were in the  Red cross were kind of protected. That changed  during the Iraq conflict. We know stories of  humanitarian workers being. Suffering terrible  consequences. And so we prepare students  for that to the extent that we can. Can   we start with a country? So for those of  you who do like we start with something,  right? We start with a world, a space, a place, a  kind of area. You start with a country that we’ve  created. It’s called pastoral. In this country  is a country that is, former colonial country,  a British. It has a North-South divide between the  affluent northerners who are, for the most part,  more militaristic and a right of center  government who are impressing indigenous   Southerners or Southerners that kind of represent  a different type of culture. There’s a lot of  detail on that. The map lay of the county  in which we take place because once again,  we’re situation based. We take students somewhere  physically on 40 acres of property in this county.  And this is actually showing what’s going on  during the simulation with regard to movement.like you all. And the work that you do,  it’s complex. It’s not like we put people   together and say, well, get at it. Right? We  have a dossier. We have a country, we have a  background of the country. The students coming  in need to know this. The NGOs that come in,   they can interview back there in the midst of  interviews. Now they have to apply for BS that are  coming to the country virtually. This year’s  program, which will start in two weeks,   we have nearly 20 students from six different  academic institutions, the United States and  Canada and some internationals, and they are  applying for a visa. And so they give them a form  and they have to produce a photograph, and they  have to have interviews with immigration officers   online before they come to the country. We’re  very restricted. You’re coming to the country,  you’re going to cross the border. Some of  them are not going to prosper easily. I mean,   you have that experience. You don’t cross 38 and  find yourself fleeing from burnout. We do a little  bit of that with that so that that when they get  this look and feel of being somewhere else is   really important, I think. Visa application. So.  Right. Most of you in this room have completed  the visa application. It’s the family. American  college students are not even those who aspire to   do this type of work. The percentage of Americans  that have passports are higher than in the past,  but they’re still lower than internationals,  particularly Europeans. So to apply for a visa  in a country doesn’t exist is a little bit  unusual. Also, to fill out an information   form with this information form, actually part  of it is a proof of life statement. That you’re  held hostage. There’s a way of us identifying  who you are. We have students to do that and  to put information about that, and I’m struck  by that. But this is to indicate that for the  three days that you’re across, there, all might  not be as safe as you think it’s going to be.Well, this is kind of the most critical part of  all this. It helps you understand the way we do   things. And once again, not being familiar  with LA, I’m not sure if this matches up to  your experiences, which is a question that I  have, and I’m going to try to find out while   I’m here is that this is called a MSEL. And it  stands for Master Scenario List, Events list,  and the military town of the United States, where  what happens is every half an hour something is   taking place. So dividing into groups, students  don’t see this, they don’t know what’s coming.  But most of that is going to be meetings with  NGOs. So we have Indios that represent Red  cross type organizations, emergency management  type organizations, military, police, LGBTQ,  advocacy groups. Because in our role players, we  have people who are IDPs or representing the queer  community. We have people in our role players  who are representing the artistic community.   We have people in our role plays. That’s  with them because what we’re trying to do  is within the IDP population that is role playing  itself. We’re trying to reflect the full panoply  of what people are when they’re when they’re  internally displaced. They bring their pets,   they bring their identity. So this is a  series of meetings that take place over  that time. Right? It’s a little bit  hard to understand, but once again,   it recognizes what’s going on. And one of the  things that we recognize is probably the same  with all experiential learning. You plan it out,  recognizing if we have 60 or 70% of the state,  if it works the way we want it to work  more succeeding. Right? Because that’s   what experiential learning is about for students.  If I set this up and I want them to run this,  but my students want to go into some  sort of direction they’re running into,   let them go there. That learning is about  providing as a transit points to what that is.  So quite often we have students that will  kind of go off of things notwithstanding this.Just some photographs from past exercises. You  know, part of the exercise also is that when  students come, those of you who have been  deployed in different organizations like   that are not going to be people that sort of work  for NGOs. And you’ve been deployed somewhere and  you go somewhere. You go on mission, you you  show up and you’re just not put in mission.   You’re going to do some in-country training and  you’re trying to learn the language. I can’t do  that if we’re here for days very quickly, but  you’re going to learn about the culture. You   can learn about the protocols, you can learn  about what’s going on with NGOs do. And this  is what we do. Often students arrive and we’re  teaching them about the country, their roles,   NGO workers, everyone that’s presenting is country  staff. All of this from the US Peace Corps. And  some of you may get familiar with it and that the  training that is, if you’re deploying in the US   before you go overseas experience is usually 27  months, of which 24 months of it is actually in,  in working in a school or village or  whatever. But several months of it is,  training, right, so that you can be acquired  to the culture and the language of what school?These are role players we pull with. These are  all role players. But the largest section of our   role is the exercise that we’re running. In two  weeks, we’ll be 20 students who will come in from  5 or 6 different colleges, and then another 30, 40  role players who will play police, military, NGOs,  etc. most of that doing it for years. But  then probably about 1520 of that group will be  internally displaced people, the top five people  we pull from area colleges and universities. We   actually have a very close relationship with  the US community college next door, and they  always bring some students and you are going to  play this person or these circumstances. You’re  going to be asked these questions. We ask them to  develop their own identity also. And, you know, we  make things as realistic as we can before crossing  a border. So we have a border crossing and there  are police there. And, we’re trying to make this  uncomfortable for people who’ve never experienced   that once again. Those of you who cross borders  know this is no laughing matter right here.  Crossing into a border of a country and your  passport, you’ve got something that says you’ve   been into a country, right? If you were, for  instance, if you were going into some countries  and you have a stamp of a country that doesn’t  have diplomatic relations with that country,Several years. We actually work with the military.  We no longer work with the military. We found our   exercise of getting a little bit too militaristic.  We actually operated in Florida for probably the  first period. And then we moved everything up  to Maryland. The problem with the military is   that they want to make it militaristic. And we  are focusing on humanistic and collaborative  learning. And one of the things that we are seeing  students come to this, and we have a lot of calls  and forums and so forth. And one of the things we  wanna know is that if you’ve been and its place   person before and you’ve suffered some problems,  that sometimes people don’t recognize itself,  they’ve suffered from this. I understand this is  a difficult thing to ask. We want to know that   because on staff we have a social worker and we  have a registered nurse, and we have had to pull  people out of simulation. And I’m wondering if  you’ve done more to pull people out of a Larp,  because all of a sudden something’s happening  to them that they’re recalling something that   took place 20 years before that’s causing  some disturbance. We’ve had that happen  by militarizing. We’re exacerbating that,  making it worse. But for every exercise,   there’s something that goes on with  somebody that we need to pull them  out of the exercise because we don’t want to  make the exercise. Destructive for them. Sets.You know, and I think in roleplaying, like  in our what we do is that we’re trying to  infuse students in different ways with different  types of information. Different things are   happening. There’s a macro agenda, the Microsoft  for our agenda this year, we changed drastically.  We are an NGO called the Forage Corps in New York.  That’s been placed for the past era, but we also  lost 40% of our funding because we were funded by  USAID. We’re on the ropes financially, like a lot  of NGOs are. There’s been a lot of bad media. The  Castilian government doesn’t want to work with us,  and they think that we’re not going to exist for  longer because they’re in. President actually is  a militaristic president. He’s been to Mar-A-Lago  and he’s friends with the current administration,   the United States. So he has a different view of.  So we’re trying to feed lots of information to  students simultaneously, not just about what’s  going on, which is a wildfire and an internal  conflict in the country. But all this macro  information that we do it easily by just producing   newspapers. It’s like, well, why don’t we use  social media and we can do that when we take  their phones away from them, we give them walkie  talkies. It’s a little bit hard, but we’re do it   for them. What I find in newsprint is actually an  opportunity for people to sit and deliberate and  talk about it. Too often I think communication  is singular. It’s directed to you and you do the  same. But if I get three people to read it and  share what’s going on, that becomes important.We do have objectives. I’m not going to go through  these in detail, but. It’s a field of humanitarian  education, of which we are part of members of  organizations and so forth. Their objectives   you’re trying to accomplish. Some of these are  evaluated strictly. Some of them are evaluated  in a more kind of aggregate way to see if students  are accomplishing these things. We want students   to walk away. And when students are finished with  the experience, there’s actually 1 or 2 things I  find. One is I find students saying, I don’t like  this. This is hard for me. I don’t think I can do  this. I said, okay, you want to give it one thing?  I said, God bless you. Give yourself. Because this  is important and humanitarian work. People are  not prepared to do this. Shouldn’t do it. I have   just as many students who will come to me and  say. I felt empowered. I felt I could do this,  I could do it. I think that’s the next thing I  want about them, is that they’ve gotten a job  with an NGO in South Sudan or Mindanao, or they’re  in the US Peace Corps or something, and they will  come back and say, this three day experience  allowed me the confidence level to do that.  It’s a few more slides. One of the objectives  that we have for students is that they have to   work out in agreement. They’re coming in basically  as a forwarding group that they’re working out an  agreement among all the NGOs. There’s a lot of  negotiation because all the NGOs and the IDPs  are looking for different things they’re trying  to accomplish, and this year, they’re not even   going to trust them because they’re more.  So they’re gonna have to work around that.This is one of our who actually ended up after the  experience working for a non-violent peace NGO in  South Sudan. I don’t know if you know anything  about civilian protection organizations. The   civilian protection organizations are non-violent  ways in which organizations would take people who  are potentially subject to violence. She worked  for one. And today she also worked for NGO’s  in Lebanon. She’ll tell us she was a student of  mine at George Mason University, that she would   not have gotten that job. But for the three day  experience that we have, because she was able to  articulate the things that she had as a role  player into the work that she would be doing   overseas. And it worked for the organizations  applying for it. And they brought her.But some lessons learned, and then I’ll close it  out. Costumes help a lot. Perfect be the enemy of  the good. I think you learned that this morning.  Right? And I realize that also experiential work   is that sometimes we have this lofty way. We  want everybody to kind of come out the same,  maybe come out different, saying things don’t  work out that well. We’ve already had a tech   snafu in our own simulation this week, actually  has a zoom link and work with all the things you  just experienced. You know, and that’s learning,  that’s education. I mean, to be an educator is  actually to be an educator is not to be a  perfectionist. If you’re a perfectionist,   an educator. I took the plea for you to be an  educator to be flexible and to be adaptive,  and to get our students to recognize that being  flexible and adaptive is very important in life,  right? If there’s something in your way, you  don’t sit there and be flustered. You take her   away. So experience is when you’re uncomfortable.  That’s important also. Right? To be comfortable  doesn’t necessarily give you a learning  experience. To be uncomfortable. If you   learn to be overtly uncomfortable, maybe you’re  closed off. Students are given the opportunity,  but rely on each other to find solutions. This is  one of the other problems with learning that which   you quickly want to jump in, right? Those of you  in the classroom you see students like you might  step in. Step in so that I can figure it out.  They will figure it out. Given time and energy  and resources, students will figure it out. You  don’t have to be there. Camera three is better  than building skill. The end of the day when I’m  trying to do it is I’m not teaching you skills.   I’m teaching you to be comrades, to share, to  trust, to build, to work as a team. That’s more  important than skill building. Young professionals  can make other young professionals. In our. What  we do is that once you come into our program, we  make you in charge of next year’s program. Those  of us who are the gray hairs. We’re wanting to  step back, and I have a certain vision of it,   but I have exercise directors who are in their 20s  this year. And they will say, David, we’re going  to do this, and I’m going to say, I do. Get your  exercise. I want you to do it. I mean, there are  some times when I think we can’t do that because  we can’t afford it. I will tell them that 26 year   old don’t necessarily understand the budget,  but I will recognize that it’s their exercise.Reflection and learning continue long  after the experience of those who have   done lawful. Don’t you know? It’s not like, oh,  we’re done now I’m reflecting. It’s  two weeks later, you’re reflecting,   it’s six months later, you’re reflecting because  something’s happening. You’re thinking, oh,  I remember when I did that. No. And now it makes  sense to me. And costumes are always a good thing.A chapter in a book coming out in a  couple of weeks, if you’re interested,   a little bit self-promotion. It’s coming out in  a couple weeks, a couple months. November talked  about experiences. I can give you more information  about this.I’m never the last one. So what I want  to find out is what I am doing. Largish. No no no  no, I was not. Haha. I’ve never. I never used the  word. In fact, I wasn’t sure about what it is  until I asked my 30 year old son. He says yeah,   I know what Mark is that people tell me what? It  laughed and I went right about it. And then this  was early on when Sara invited me. It’s like,  oh, okay. It seems like we’re doing something   like that, but are we really doing it? Maybe  not, but I went to about it. This is why you  come to conferences. Believe me, I may be telling  you something that’s new to you, but you’re going   to tell me a lot that’s going to be new for  me and then tell you so thank you very much.Please, just. Just stay there. We have  time for a couple of comments or questions.I won’t be around all day, so I will be in that  empty seat at your table. Ask me a question. Yes,  I have a question. I have many questions. Okay.  But the one that I’m most interested in is do they  break character in the evening to debrief their,  their debriefing and they break character at the   end of the three days? Right. So the evening for  the first two and a half days, they’re continuous  in character. Then they’re deployed out of the  country and they are no longer deployed out of the   country. Then we bring them out in the simulation.  And really, it’s not like you turn it off. If you  played a role for two and a half days, it’s not  like you can turn it off. We actually go through   a process of meditating, reflecting, thinking of  who you were, what you did, what you’re trying to  accomplish. Keep your eyes closed. Wake up.  You’re back in wherever you crossed. Well,  actually, western Maryland, you’re somewhere  else. Then we’re out of character, and then we   debrief the debriefing on the schedule. So I have  to stay in character. So there’s some debriefing  of character that the country director shows up  and said, what’s happening because it’s their   first deployment. So it would be natural that the  people would do some debriefing in character with  them while they’re. Question? Yes. Consistency  in how well it works. Is it even level or do  you have like, oh, this film was a star this  year and then the next one had all this time,  of course, everything is inconsistent. We also  always do an after action report and talking   about what happened. And often the weaknesses  come from, well, we didn’t get the best role  players or somebody didn’t show up or something  traumatic happened to somebody. And so for  me, pretty consistent. And what I find is that the  anecdotal observational discussion, that is what  really tells me that it’s succeeded.. This  is what I know is a success. We do data and  write an article. You can see our data and  all of that. Not always stellar. Sometimes   it doesn’t work the way you want to, but that’s  an objective opinion from my standpoint. I mean  subjective opinion from my standpoint, whether  it works right, whether I think it work. But the  students feel it’s kind of you get in front of  the classroom. So that was the terrible lecture.   And everyone is rousing applause. And because it  was wonderful that you gave it, you don’t know.Question. Yes. So we’ve seen other  humanitarian groups use similar buyback of  Pakistan. If not, have you tried? Leading  others to adopt this big organization,  which is much larger than us, is the  Harvard Humanitarian Initiative that’s   out of Harvard University. That’s run mostly  from a public health NGO standpoint. So they  run something similar to this. But what  they do is they bring students together.  A group of NGOs that have been tasked into  a country with the UN organizing agency.  oh. which is humanitarian affairs. And I’m kind  of organizing this country. It doesn’t exist or  something like this. We actually went up to  visit Harvard actually a couple of years ago,   and we found it very large. They had like  100 students. We don’t want to do a hundred  programs. We want to do 15 students because  we debrief throughout what happens after every  iteration of the country. The exercise director  and the role players get together and talk about   what happened. And we get to know all 15 students  really well. And we say she’s being excluded. How  do we bring her back in? He’s dominated. How do  we put him aside? This isn’t happening. There  seems to be some learning. You can’t do that  with 150 students. At least I’m done with that.