{"id":7101,"date":"2015-07-28T13:26:47","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T17:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/?p=7101"},"modified":"2015-07-28T13:26:47","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T17:26:47","slug":"what-ramesh-learned-from-ron-kraybill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/2015\/07\/what-ramesh-learned-from-ron-kraybill\/","title":{"rendered":"What Ramesh Learned from Ron Kraybill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Henry<\/a>
Ramesh Prakashvelu (seated at left) was the successor to CJP alumna Florina Benoit (right) as associate director of praxis at the Henry Martyn Institute. Between them is Najma Sanai, an associate facilitator at HMI. Standing is Robinson Thapa, a core HMI team member, who suddenly fell ill while conducting a training in his home state of Manipur. He died in April 2015, five months after this photo at HMI. (Photo by Bonnie Price Lofton)<\/i><\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Ramesh Prakashvelu<\/strong>, the Henry Martyn Institute\u2019s associate director of praxis, was asked what he learned from Ron Kraybill<\/strong>, a former CJP professor who spent 1999-2000 on sabbatical at HMI, Ramesh quickly recited this list of 14 takeaways. In Ramesh\u2019s words, but in no particular order:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Early on, Ron taught us, \u201cIf the only tool you have is a hammer, everything will look like a nail.\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. How to organize a participatory and empowering workshop, centering around attentive listening and allowing space for different perspectives and<\/li>\n
  3. The importance of a posted \u201cactivity sheet,\u201d so people can see what they can expect to learn and how long it will They can see their questions added as we go along and they can see notes on what we\u2019ve done.<\/li>\n
  4. Always cover the importance of confidentiality in the workshops \u2013 that is, what occurs should not go outside these<\/li>\n
  5. We all have our biases \u2013 none of us is objective \u2013 so we need to beware of our own We need to put them out on the table or leave them out of the room, in order to do our best to reflect the views of the people in the room.<\/li>\n
  6. If there is an \u201celephant\u201d in the room, acknowledge it; if there are important things that are unspoken, speaking about these things will<\/li>\n
  7. \u201cEnergizers\u201d (lively exercises as breaks in the workshop) are<\/li>\n
  8. When you do brainstorming, don\u2019t judge the ideas people Let them be registered for consideration.<\/li>\n
  9. How to write effective role plays that elicit empathy and let people put themselves in others\u2019 Now we are able to create role plays on the spot \u2013 it was drilled into us.<\/li>\n
  10. The importance of working together as a team and not being \u201cexperts\u201d who come and go in the We facilitators are all present from beginning to the end, regardless of who is the lead facilitator at a particular time. And we always sit together and debrief at the end of each day.<\/li>\n
  11. Being willing to change, to adapt what we planned, based on the needs of the participants and the flow of the work Always maintaining awareness and making adjustments, as needed.<\/li>\n
  12. Having respect for the people in the Choosing to walk with them \u2013 rather than exercising power over them \u2013 and acknowledging that we are all learners, we\u2019re all doing the best we can.<\/li>\n
  13. Lose your Ron taught us, \u201cEither you can work for solutions, or you can work for credit.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Most importantly, trust your own resources \u2013 don\u2019t parrot what other facilitators do. I, as a Tamil, was told, \u201cYour culture, language and religion can contribute as much to peacebuilding as they do to conflict,\u201d so I started digging for Tamil peacebulding practices and I found them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    When Ramesh Prakashvelu, the Henry Martyn Institute\u2019s associate director of praxis, was asked what he learned from Ron Kraybill, a former CJP professor who spent… Read more about What Ramesh Learned from Ron Kraybill<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":7102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1073],"tags":[1329,1330,580],"issues":[1275],"class_list":["post-7101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","tag-henry-martyn-institute","tag-ramesh-prakashvelu","tag-ron-kraybill","issues-2014-15"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7188,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7101\/revisions\/7188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7101"},{"taxonomy":"issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issues?post=7101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}