On Saturday, October 20, 2012, The Myanmar Project traveled to Hartford, CT for a second time to engage with the Karen Refugee community in a workshop focusing on fostering leadership and teamwork.
At the church where the workshop was held, members of The Myanmar Project challenged the refugee community to complete two activities: one involving two teams building a tower out of raw spaghetti, tape, a piece of string, and scissors to support a marshmallow, and the other involving two teams trying to bring a series of connected straws to the floor with every team member holding the straws with only his or her index finger without ever letting the finger slip.
Trying to make spaghetti stand…
The final addition
Balancing carefully
Discussing what leadership means
One of the Burmese students, Kadahra Htoo, gives us a short speech
The students also discussed what leadership meant, and wrote their thoughts on post-it notes that were attached to a poster. They also acted these traits out by creating skits. The students learned a great deal about working together to accomplish these activities and left the workshop feeling more confident about their leadership skills.
—Eli Rivkin