Green Street Community Lead Councillor, Cllr Sharaf Mahmood organised this event with faith and community leaders in the area to bring dialogue and understanding between youth and older generations. This was a key issue of concern from his regular meetings with local leaders.
So, how could they have a meeting that was both fun and engaging, while at the same time have some depth and true dialogue across the generations? Answer: bring in a team of 8 Community Conversation facilitators from Conflict and Change!
Volunteers Nana and Meenakshi, who have lots of experience in working with young people on conflict and communication issues, helped Ros to shape the programme to merge some of their tried-and-trusted activities and games with community conversation style facilitated conversations and questions.
About 40 people attended from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds and the young people were mainly represented by a great bunch of young men from St Bonadventure School in Forest Gate from years 7, 8 and 10.
Starting with “the sun shines on..” we got everyone up and swopping seats as we found out many things in common.
We then separated into small groups of single generations facilitated by a Conflict and Change volunteer to reflect on the question “What would you like the other generation to understand about you?”. As always, our facilitators help the dialogue by trying to pull out the deeper values and issues beneath what people say.
All these comments were then fed back to the main group and we heard things like From the older generation
“we’ve got life experience and we have something to give”
“we are not your enemy – we want the best for you”
“we are willing to learn – we don’t have all the answers”
And from younger people
“We are more sensitive than you think and we want adults to communicate with us”
“We get bored easily and so need a balance between education and free time”
“We would like more acknowledgement for the efforts we make”
“Music is very meaningful to us, it contributes to our lives”
We had another activity where young and old had to pair up for a minute and guess things about each other and then see if they were right, such as favourite food. (See the photo)
We then went back to mixed generation groups to answer the question “what has surprised you or touched you so far?” and lots came out of this such as “all these cultures are mixing together – it is so unusual”, “older people do respect us”, “young and old can get along together”.
We ended by a quick brainstorm in the small groups for ideas for further events in the area on behalf of Cllr Mahmood who used this as a consultation.
Last thing was to ask 3 questions of all those that were left – about 33 people
“Who feels that they have something in common with the other generation after this event?” 27
“Who feels a bit more positive now about generations getting on together?” 33
“who feels that the generations understand each other better after this event?” 28
Final comment from Cllr Sharaf Mamood:
“I believe that the event was great and allowed barriers to be broken
down with the older and younger generations. I believe it is key that
grown ups and young people learn to understand one another so that
they come to a realisation that they have shared norms and values that
they should clebrate. I would like to build upon the excellent work
done at the last event and continue to build bridges and break down
barriers in our community.”
