In just 49 days, my fellow adventurers and I will be headed to Rwanda and then on to Kenya. We’ll be training local leaders in conflict resolution, servant leadership, communication, community relations, trauma, compassion fatigue, and self-care. It’s all about beats.
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When you look at the people on our team, you could label us as experts. Really though, we are just 7 learners in a brand new classroom.
The learning curve ahead for us is already apparent. As we’ve gathered to frame our sessions and prepare our lessons, I think we’ve all been impressed by what we don’t know about the people who will attend our trainings. Not only will they march to a different beat, but they will be teaching us entirely new rhythms.
If we want to be effective in our efforts to teach, we will need to move to those rhythms and come to understand how opportunities for and challenges to peace rise and fall in a different culture. To be good teachers, we will need to be the most attentive learners in the room. We are doing our homework. Getting ready as best we can. Yet our success will be measured by our ability to move.
That’s the beauty of this entire enterprise. To bring about positive transformation in newly-found friends, we must first be transformed and open to dance to a different beat.