Making sense of Corona times within YA Team

Its been an intense time for all of humanity. All our plans and underlying streak for control has bene humbled by doing of a sub-micro organism. 

From the seeing of Youth Alliance team too, we saw many of our plans getting debunked. We surrendered to emergence. Although we found grounding in living the questions that rose for each of us -

• How do I do something for the suffering I am witnessing around looking at my circle of concern and circle of influence?
• How to hold fear and uncertainty and still make meaning and value for myself and the world?
• What kind of human beings will we be when we come out of it?
• What is it that’s taking birth amidst this destruction that I can support?
• How can I / we step out of the paradigm of control and move towards a paradigm of surrender? (नियंत्रण >> समर्पण)
• अगर हमने जो भी प्लान किया था, वो कैंसिल हो जायेगा तो हम क्या करेंगे?
• अगर भविष्य के विचार को न सोचकर, बल्कि आज के विचार से कदम उठाएं जाएं तो उसका क्या प्रभाव होगा?
• How can we take our current work of community building and extent it to communities we are with- family, flatmates, neighbours, friends etc
• There is no other teacher like a crisis but ready are we to learn? Or are we (world at large) going to resist this change more strongly?

Holding Uncertainty

We also asked ourselves -

What opportunities are you finding that are naturally feeling pulled towards? 

कौनसे सुयोग बनते आप देख रहे हो, जिसकी तरफ आप अपने आप को आकर्षित पा रहे हो?

• Is it the crumbling down of the dominant narratives? - temporary collapse of systems - vacuum created - a space that is emerging can be filled in
• Understanding the systemic application of our work and values
• 3 days work at YA and 3 / 4 days work whatever I feel called out to 
• Opportunity to engage with alumni esp those working with communities - sacred responsibility
• Break our pattern of working at YA and discovering a new of working together
• Everything's going online - are there any other ways of coming together if not physically and online? 
• Spread exciting, insightful rumours around plastic etc through whatsapp
• Learn some important life skills like farming 
• Work with our family and friends as a community
• Shared Inquiries about us and the world

And then we summarised what are the individual and collective opportunities in this moment that we seek to bring our commitment to:

Individual Opportunities

Collective Opportunities

Engage wherever you are - Take this time to deepen our relationship with our family members, friends, neighbours etc. Also. taking our learning of self and community to them.  Bring family members together virtually in these times. Reaching out to local organizations and individuals who might need any form support.  Reaching out to our community in our villages - Kanpur/Kutch Learn - Giving some time and space to creativity and learning in our life. Learn a new skill, life-skill etc. Practice art, or any other form of creative expression.

Reflection and communication - Take time to deeply reflect and connect to our work and its various elements. Learn about our work’s systemic application with respect to the present day crisis and be able to communicate it to the larger world. (especially, seeing the pause of all the dominating forces and systems as an opportunity.)  Conversations that were due in YA about YA - can happen now in team, with alumni, stakeholders - YA’s response and communication in times of Corona through our social media handles, newsletters etc. Can this reflection and communication manifest itself through collective dialogues with alumni?  Engagement - Since most of our processes are taking a back-seat we take this time to engage more deeply with our alumni. Especially with ones who work with communities/grassroots and need immediate support during these crises. Also, with individuals who might seek a space to express their anxiety, grief and confusions.  Experiments - We build our muscle to apply alternative learning in our engagements beside our usual experiential. We take this time to harness our creativity and work on imaginative ideas and stories. Break our patterns of working and imagine new ones.  Can we imagine engagement with different sections of the society through our work? How do we prepare for that?

And we know that all these are intentions and whatever needs to emerge shall emerge :)