Young Debater School

 

This summer with the support of Bard CCE after the Get Engaged Conference, Young Debater School has started the YDS membership program. The program educates young people to debate and supports participants to open debate clubs and engages others to join the debate community. Moreover, YDS members every two months organize Regional Debate Tournament to build friendship between debaters around the region. On October 22, YDS members first time independently organized their first debate tournament. According to the feedback (private message), this was a very interesting tournament. However, the YDS team faced a lack of team working and organizing skills. Seven out of eight students told that they were a lack in organization part and faced some problems. These skills are very important for them to learn because according to the YDS action plan they have series of other events. Therefore, we want to conduct a 3-day workshop.

 

The target group of this project is YDS members. There are 8 members (high school students 15-17 years old) in YDS who live in different parts of the Sugd region in Tajikistan. Because of this, they were not able to have more meetings; thus, they faced some problems while organizing debate tournaments. Moreover, they did not go through the workshops on organizational skills. This project will introduce them to organizational skills; so they would not have any problems in the future.

 

Advancing organizational skills of 8 YDS members through the 2 days’ workshop on January 5-8, 2020 at Shohin International Camp. Our participants will be 8 YDS members who are currently working on the development of the debate community in the Sugd region.

We will consider our project successful if:

Students successfully complete the workshop (means be present in the workshop, participate actively and ask the questions) and prepare a well-structured action plan during the workshop (means the plan where all specific information included (dates, responsible people, and agenda).
By the end of the workshop, we create the tool kit (guidelines) on how to organize the Debate Tournament in Tajikistan

 

Day 1 – Lesson learned

On the first day, we will discuss more the problems that YDS members faced during the organization of the 5th Regional Debate Tournament. Members will share their opinion on how we could avoid the issues. After, we will conduct a presentation on organizational skills and divided students into groups of 4 people to practice that skills. By dividing into groups we will ask them to organize an activity together for other people. By that, we will be able to see how students can organize a small event in 30 min. In the end, they will be given a task to develop their action plan based on the organizational skills that they learn during the presentation.

Day 2 – New Skills Day

At the beginning of the second day, students will present their action plan and will get some feedback and comments to develop further. After, there will be a small workshop on the division of responsibility; so students learned how to divide the responsibilities in the process of organizing event. We will use WBS and Gantt Chart which is very beneficial to divide the responsibilities. After that, we will conduct a workshop on research for argumentation. We want to use this time to teach them the research method because it is very important to know. In this workshop, students will learn how to research and find appropriate sources efficiently and how to examine and use the argument during the debate.

Day 3 – “We are ready”

On the third day called we are ready because students will finalize their action plan for the next 6 months (January – May). Students will present their action plan that will be developed based on given feedback to avoid possible issues. Also, we want to organize a small workshop on basic photography and video editing skills using CANVA. These are very important skills for our members since they will prepare materials to share on the social media pages of YDS. In the end, we will organize reflection and ask students to give their feedback for the workshop, also, we will give them a private evaluation form to see how effective was our workshops.

As for now, the only risk that might appear is the place to organize the workshop. It is possible that there will not be a free space in the Camp for us to rent for 2 days. In this case, we will organize the workshop in “Uqobcha” Camp that is located in Khujand city and have the same price for renting.

 

Young Debater School will provide stationery for students and trainers.

 

Young Debater School is the initiative that works on the development of the debate community in Tajikistan since 2014. In 2019, the project was selected and presented at the Get Engaged Conference 2019. After, the project leader, Dilshod Hamroboev, became a Bard Global Fellow. Therefore, the project is sustainable since there are 6 more events that YDS members will organize in the upcoming 6 months (January – June 2020). Moreover, there is a $750 (Global Fellows grant) budget is saved for the development of YDS in summer 2020 from Bard College CCE.

The reason why it is important for us to have a budget for accommodation is that YDS members live in different cities and villages of the Sugd region and quite far from each other. They are from 4 cities; therefore, we will need to bring them all together to have a very productive workshop. They live 2-3 hours far from each other, thus, we think instead of spending 6 hours every day on the road it is better to have a place where we can work from morning till night.

 

Dilshod Hamroboev – sophomore student of ICP department
– prepare all materials and logistics
– prepare all financial documents
– conduct a workshop on organization skills, dividing responsibilities through WBS and Gantt Chart, photography and video editing skills on CANVA
– prepare evaluation forms and make sure everyone fill them

 

Khiradmand Sherliev – sophomore student of ICP department
– prepare and conduct a workshop on the method of research (including argumentation, counter argumentation, and reliable sources for debate )
– prepare the list of the energizers

 

Dilshod Hamroboev

Email: youngdebaterschool@gmail.com