NVC workshop in India
Coimbatore, 7th – 15th October 2015
One outcome of my Ruhpolding workshops was that I was invited by Dr Nathan Krishnan, director of the the KKID (Karl Kübel Institute for Development Education) in Coimbatore, India, to give NVC workshops for teachers.
Dr Nathan Krishnan himself was participant of the Ruhpolding workshop in 2012. Some other members of the institute came to the workshop in 2014. I asked Klaus Karstädt, NVC trainer from Germany, to join me.
In a NVC training it is important for me to include all the groups which are involved in the development of a child. This facilitates the chance of acceptance of this “unusual” communication, and subsequent cooperation is higher as if only one group is involved.
Therefore I suggested to offer parallel workshops not only for teachers but also for children and parents.
I invited some former participants from Ruhpolding as support team to Coimbatore.
They live in India: Anand Dhanakoti, Dr. Patricia Gokhale, and Vivek and Swati Singh.
We shared the group work, the cultural evening with the 138 children, and any other support during these 9 days.
We all benefitted from this cooperation: mutual learning about NVC, about the Indian culture, exchange about different local projects and companionship — this is what I took out of it.
I add here some of the feedbacks of the children:
“I am grown up as a boy in an environment where I was not important. Here I am important.”
“I like the way the Germans react with students. I am proud to be an Indian.”
“Nonviolence will go above the mountains. I will go to my school and give these ideas to 4 people and they will give it to another 4 people, so we are becoming 40 and later 400. With our school we can bring the change to the world. Nobody accuses us. We children talk nonviolently, adults can take over and then the world takes it over.”
“You were like children with us, in the methodology, the plays, the roleplays, ease to comprehend, not boring, just for children!”