Boise, Idaho [14-days CEC Leadership Training]

Summer is coming soon and I’m super excited about that. I will be back home for summer in 2 weeks!! It’s sad that I had to miss Eid which one of the biggest holiday or celebration for Muslim. I will be in Idaho for the next two weeks for CEC Leadership program preparing for next year orientation. Next year Naomi wants to expand the CEC area on campus and try to make this program more visible to the students. CEC itself stands for Constructive Engagements of Conflict which basically talk about how to resolve conflict in a right way and non-violent way. It’s such a good program that needs more attention and interest from people on campus because we do face conflict almost every day in our campus life. Not only that, but we can also use this standard and apply it to our life after UWC in our own community. Sadly, not many people recognize this golden opportunity and that’s why we try to make this program grow bigger next year.

We went to Idaho by plane and there’s 25 of us, CEC Crew. The first two days in Idaho (Saturday and Sunday) we have a pretty chill day with a barbeque in the presidents of College of Idaho’s house. And we also went to Anne Frank memorial in downtown Boise and eat in Alumni’s Farm near Idaho. It was a fun day to relax our body and mind before working for the workshop in the next day.

From Monday till Friday we basically worked on our workshop. Preparation session on Monday, 3 days of the workshop, and on Friday we went to an amusement park in Idaho after a long workshop work. In the next weekend, we have a rest day and on Sunday we have a brief meeting about how the workshop went and what could have done better. Our flight back to ABQ is on Tuesday so on Monday we have a long meeting about how next year orientation is gonna be, our role in the campus as a CEC crew, and just how next year, in general, gonna be.

 Tuesday is a travel day and a nice lunch in ABQ. After that, we spent Wednesday and Thursday on Santa Fe. This 2days is unnecessary but they gave us time to have free time, chill, and just hang out with our CEC peers to build that team connection. We went to Downtown and it was super fun. Not gonna lie, we walked around there and take a bunch of good pictures. On Friday we went back to Campus in Montezuma and I leave campus on Friday Midnight. I worked on the farm on Friday and it was weirdly fun?! Like I never want to work on the farm at all bcs.. it is a farm. But on Friday idk why but I love it so much working there. I was even thinking about joining that exed next year.

 

Now that all the schedule already mentioned, I will talk about the workshop. One word, I AM SUPER HAPPY. I love doing the workshop. It was kinda hard at first and I’m nervous because we will lead the group as a facilitator with a totally new stranger. But, once I finish the first workshop, the rest was super easy and fun! I feel like my skills in public speaking, communication, facilitating, and even my vocabulary has grown. I feel like a new person that had a great upgrade on my ability. I feel like a professional facilitator once I finished all my four workshops.

 In total, with 25 people in CEC crew, we have 9 workshops. Each workshop has 2-4 people and they all have different topic around conflict. This is the list of the workshops:

1. Listening and Coaching

2. Nonviolent Communication

3. Difficult Conversation  

4. Leveraging Difference and Disagreements [THIS ONE IS MINE!]

5. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

6. Navigating Virtual Conflict and Community

7. Bystander Intervention

8. Restorative Justice

9. Conflict Analysis

            The conclusion is that this trip was actually a good program but it’s just unnecessarily long. The actual work only took like 5 days, but yet we have too many free time and I’d personally choose to go back home rather than spending my summer here. The school tries to be really nice to us because they pay all the expenses like food, accommodation, place to stay, etc. Once again, I was reminded that I am super lucky to be here and got this rare opportunity. Thank you UWC.