Face to Face!

Yesterday, we drove to Dehradun: Vaibhav, Sushil, Ashish, Sumit and self*. We met two Canadian students at Samagra and the staff there- Tika Ram, Mohit and Negi ji. We shared some videos (Peter Reitzes, Julia Irani) and there after we had an open Q&A session. Victor and Chetna, from MacMaster University, Ontario, asked many questions and we, the pws, tried to answer them as accurately as possible. Understanding each other was difficult at times for two reasons- our Indian accent and of course our stammering. So, it was a challenge for both the parties and by and large everyone did very well.

The rule for the guests was to keep on repeating the question till they had TRULY understood. PWS were also requested to use their techniques, use smaller sentences and – not just answer but make sure that they have been understood, by asking for feedback. Pretty engaging session which lasted about 3 hours. We returned after a nice lunch and interaction with the managing trustee, Suchitra ji.

(I could not take a picture- but Tikaram has taken one. Whenever it is put on Samagra blog, I will add a link here. Till then try and imagine- a group of stammerers trying to talk to a group of students, who have learned just one word of Hindi- Namastey!  BTW, it sounds very sweet coming from them.)

* I invited other young pws also for this face to face fun interaction- but Alas 🙁  they were too busy on Facebook!