On Friday, June 26th, RAPP met with 21 delegates from the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The meeting was arranged through the International Visitors Council (IVC) of Cincinnati as a part of the Department of State's program Youth Leadership and Conflict Resolution: A Project for Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
The meeting kicked off with a presentation by Mary Watkins of UC International about UC's ESL program, Just Community, and her personal memories of RAPP's founding and storied history. Rebecca and Un gave a brief presentation on RAPP facilitators' perspective on conflict and the conflict management strategies we try to employ. Six RAPPORT members supported this and also helped answers questions from the delegates.
RAPPers and delegates then participated in an activity on trigger words as a way to model the experiential learning process we use as well as to learn from each other about our thoughts on language and oppression.
So far, we've gotten very positive feedback from the delegates and the IVC. I hope to maintain some of the relationships we were able to build in the short time we met!
A big thank you to Jojo Brannon, Jen Poon, Meagan Miller, Kinsey Borzone, Mei Hseih and Eddie Cancel for taking time out of your summer to participate!
