Diverse Strokes (Written 7/02/07)

The greatest month on the calendar has officially begun…the dog days of summer are in full bloom and it's once again time for me to be my wonderfully diverse self. What am I talking about? Today I once again got to lead a diversity session for the new group of trainees. This was actually my 3^rd time doing a diversity session, but this is my second group to do it with. Before I get into what occurred during the session, I just want to do a little flashback to November 2005. While we had a lot of sessions during our training period, the ones that really stood out to me were the diversity sessions – not because of what was being discussed but because of the person leading the session. That person was named Nela (i.e. Daniele) and she was one of the first volunteers I got to know and like during my time here. As I was watching Nela do her thing during our diversity sessions, I thought 'How cool would it be if I got to do the same thing? Come back and share with the new trainees how I have changed while being here.' And here I am – two years later, doing what I imagined back in November 2005. It's amazing sometimes how opportunities come your way that you never dreamed would happen – but Kevin (our Life & Work Coordinator) and I have a good rapport which really helps me be comfortable in these diversity sessions. Anyway, I just thought I would share that little flashback – it just hit my a few days ago. The student has literally become the teacher!

Anway, the main focus of this diversity session was for each of the volunteers to create their own diversity map. What is a diversity map? It's a way of finding out who you really are. No, not really – but it does help you discover what's really important to you. A diversity map is a graph of all the things that you consider important or that help define you as a person. It can have anything – ranging from personal stuff, to travel, to hobbies, etc. It's literally a showcase of your own diversity. You usually start with your name in the middle and then draw out lines from the center to each of your diverse points. My diversity chart had these items on it:

-           Christian

-           Visited 23 of 50 states

-           NFL

-           December 2007 (aka The Journey home)

-           Chanel HOD (Teacher, Director, Tech Support)

-           Vol 4 Life (Peace Corps Volunteer / UT Vol)

-           Peace Corps Tech Guy

-           Friends & Family (The most important folks to me)

-           Heart for kids

-           Had dinner with Head of State of Samoa

-           Chi-town South (I'm just a kid from the south side of Chicago – doing things I'm not "suppose" to do. Gotta remember where you came from!)

-           Masters

-           Photoshop (Gotta learn something in your spare time)

-           Integrity + Loyalty = Respect

-           Mom, Dad, Amy

-           I Am "America" (You don't realize how much you love your country, until you leave it!)

-           Writing

-           Motto: "He Made a Difference" (I'll talk about this on my 4^th of July post)

-           (Visited) Stewart Island (In case you missed 'The Chronicles of NZ', my last name is Stewart and that's why this is an important item)

(Note: These are in no particular order)

Some of the trainees mentioned that they had a hard time thinking of things that they thought defined them – instead defining themselves through outside factors (such as education, social status, etc). That's when I took another look at my Diveristy Map and realized how much it must have changed over the 2 years I have been here. That's when I went back (after the session) and found my original diversity map. It was kind of cluttered – but this is what the original Diveristy Map had on it:

-           USA: Visited almost half of US, St. Louis is my favorite city

-           Technology: Internet, PSP, PS2, Computers

-           African-American

-           Writing: Stories

-           Family: TN, IL, WI, MN, TX, Only Child, Born in Chicago

-           Sports: Sox/Cubs, Basketball, 23, Football, Fantasy Football

-           Nickname is MJ

-           Volunteer: Undergrad & Grad, Neyland Stadium, Florida

-           Christianity: Kids, Camp Ozark, Counselor/Videographer

-           Friends: WDE, Wrestling, Dependable

(Note: The bold represents similar ideas on my new diversity map)

While a few things have remained the same, the thing that stands out to me is how cluttered my original diversity map was. One of the things I told the trainees is that once you have been here for a while, you really start to focus on what is really important to you and about you. Another thing is that my original diversity map seemed to be a lot more general in focus – not really focusing to much on the really important stuff. I guess 2 years gives you a lot of time to concentrate on those core essentials which is reflected in my more up to date map. The new diversity map also seemed to focus more on the inward stuff, rather than a lot of the external/obvious items. I guess after doing this 3 times you realize its about sharing the non-obvious stuff instead of the obvious stuff. So after sharing my map, the trainees created their own diversity map and shared that with their fellow group members. I must also mention that Candice joined me in facilitating this diversity session – so she and I participated in the debriefing portion of the session, in which we talked about how diversity can be both a positive and a negative. The cool thing is that (without talking ahead of time – just shows how in tune our group is) we hit on two different topics for both the negative and the positive. For the negative, Candice talked about how diversity could be negative in terms of host country nationals and I talked about it in terms of the Peace Corps community. For the positive, Candice talked about how one has such a wide opportunity at meeting new people and trying new things in this situation while I talked about how the Peace Corps community provides such a wide wealth of knowledge that is just waiting to be utilized and improved upon. That's how cool we are – didn't even talk before hand and covered the major situations the trainees need to be aware of.

The diversity map session was the only session we had today because the trainees were kind of tired and had to get ready for their Volunteer Visit, which will occur tomorrow (Tuesday). So it will be interesting to see how that goes because from what I heard, they are letting the trainees find their own way to their volunteer sites (instead of being dropped off like during Group 75s volunteer visit), so we'll see how that goes. I probably won't see them again until the next diversity session which will be in August – but you never know. Have a good, diverse day and see you on ID4!