After more than a year of mostly being locked inside homes or dealing with highly distressing financial, educational, familial crises during the pandemic & lockdown, our youth have been wishing to spend some time away for their intellectual and mental refreshment. Since the pandemic is under control to some extent now, and the state too opening up, Anubhuti organized a two day residential camp on 16th and 17th October with our youth program participants from Kolegaon and Badlapur.
This camp majorly focused on 1. Love, Attraction and Friendships and 2. Social Activism and Leadership. These topics have been chosen with lot of care; as youth activists emerging as leaders and contributors to social movements, it is important that they understand their relationships from a personal as well as social & political perspective – as individuals as well as activists and leaders. The first day thus had lot of self-reflection around these matters, and the second day was powerful with a lot of reference to Bahujan histories, discussions around organizing and managing movements, and resolving leadership conflicts. These are seen to be major challenges faced in any movement and this is our attempt to build capacities of these budding activists.