This blog post was written in collaboration by Moira Donovan and Sarah Khan.
To get an inside look at the sessions, check out the Bolster Foundation’s Instagram here!
As the Banyan Impact Fellowship hosts a new cohort each year, there is a steadily growing network of young changemakers being built across the world. While the program has already seen a successful two and a half decades come and go, the BIF alumni network is as strong as it has ever been. With 573 current graduates, there are success stories reaching across every imaginable sector and geography. The alumni have served and learned during their Fellowship, and now they are leading current Fellows by providing professional opportunities.
One such alumni is Mujeebu Rahman K.C. from the 2017-2018 batch. While his time in the Fellowship allowed him to explore complex issues of trafficking in Ranchi, Jharkhand, his next steps would see him complete a Ph.D. from IIT Kanpur before returning to his home state of Kerala. In Kottakkal, Mujeebu would join two other determined academics who sought to empower young girls through education. It was there that their dream became a reality, and they established the Bolster Girls Campus.
Throughout the academic year, the residential school offers a two-year program where experts prepare promising young women for their careers. Even in the heat of April, the dedication to providing learning opportunities does not stop, and the campus is proud to offer a summer camp for high school girls. The theme of this fifth year was “Gen-Z Connects: The Power of Collaboration and Teamwork.” Over the course of several days, approximately sixty participants and twenty volunteers engaged in a series of sessions ranging from topics on building an international career to exploring alternative realities. Throughout all activities, girls were encouraged to think critically and understand the importance of collective problem-solving.
As the team was orchestrating the schedule for the camp, Mujeebu looked to the BIF alumni portal for session proposals. On this platform, he asked current Fellows and alumni alike to create plans for interactive sessions oriented towards topics such as leadership, cross-cultural communication, and interdisciplinary teamwork. Recognizing the incredible opportunity to join as facilitators, current Fellows Moira Donovan and Sarah Khan submitted their respective proposals.
Preparing For Our Sessions
While we independently prepared our session proposals, both ideas were born from the same driving question: How can I cultivate a supportive space that spurs creativity and creates a strong sense of empowerment?
We each drew on our respective professional experiences and strengths in order to envision proposals that answered this question. While we both have backgrounds in international affairs and political science, we were interested in exploring more creative and artistic approaches to allowing girls the space to imagine their brightest possible futures. We thought about the themes we wanted to delve into and the wisdom we hoped the girls would take away. From there, we worked on designing sessions that fit these visions. While they evolved over brainstorming sessions, casual conversations, and intentional reflection, our ideas eventually found their final shape.
It was critical for us to arrive on campus with a solid itinerary of our activities; however, this was only the first step towards successful sessions. From the moment that we arrived at the Bolster Girl’s Campus, we felt that it was of the utmost importance to spend time with the girls. For our ideas to be received well, we were of the mind that as much of a relationship as possible should be established. When trust is built, the space we create for the girls to express themselves can transform from an intimidating and isolating platform to a blank canvas full of endless possibilities.
The trust-building was a mutual process. From our end, we were visiting a new state, exploring a new campus, and meeting dozens of young dreamers. From their end, they were giving their all to an immersive summer camp while also hosting and attempting to make sense of outside visitors. This provided a unique opportunity for the girls to share about their education, hobbies, and families as they also asked us about ours. The time interacting with the girls extended far beyond the hours of our sessions. Bonding moments included a sunrise trek, an en-route bus dance party, a talent show, a bonfire, and many casual conversations between sessions. Not only did this time help to establish communication and comfortability between us and the participants, it created lasting memories that we will cherish forever.
Sarah’s Session – A Dream Workshop: Centering Imagination in Community Building
“But now is the time to think like poets, to envision and make visible a new society, a peaceful, cooperative, loving world without poverty and oppression, limited only by our imaginations.”
— Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
This quote lies at the heart of this workshop’s purpose. When we are young, we often imagine a world full of infinite possibilities. But as we grow older and become socialized into the norms of the world around us, we begin to accept limits. We become more practical, more pessimistic. Our imaginations and our capacity to see beyond what already exists grow stunted.
Too often, when we confront injustice in our homes, communities, and countries, we focus on what must be dismantled. We forget to ask: what should be built in its place?
This workshop, therefore, asks two essential questions:
(A) What kind of world do you want to live in?
(B) What is your role in building this dream world?
First, participants were invited to create a world from scratch, designing their ideal communities in small groups of 4-6. To prompt their creativity and set the tone for the activity, they considered questions like:
- How is power defined in this community?
- How are conflicts resolved?
- By what principles is the community governed?
- How is wealth understood?
- What infrastructure (schools, hospitals, parks, etc.) exists, and who has access to it?
After 90 minutes of deep reflection, collaborative discussion, and world-building, participants shared their visions with the group.
One group imagined a world where kindness was the currency, and the richest were those most loved. Another designed a world where factories never polluted the air, and all water was clean and abundant. The overwhelming majority envisioned societies where water, food, shelter, and education were entirely free and universally accessible.
What made this activity so powerful was its fusion of childlike wonder with the sharp critique of disillusioned youth. In co-creating these alternative worlds, the participants were not only dreaming, they were practicing the radical act of reimagining the possible.
The next step of the workshop invited participants to reflect on their own passions, interests, and talents to imagine their unique role in building the communities they envisioned. Would they be advocates, healers, or innovators? Disruptors, protectors, or storytellers? What is the essence of their contribution, and how might they carry that essence into their future lives and careers?
Through this process, the workshop became more than an exercise. It became a space where hope met action, where creativity met critique, and where young people stepped into their roles as architects of a more just and joyful world.
Moira’s Session – Creating The Story We Needed to Hear
During this time, participants were given the space to explore the power of storytelling before becoming the ones shaping the narrative. Through four activities, this session empowered young girls by fostering critical reflection, teamwork, and creativity.
Starting off with a discussion on the stories that shaped us, participants reflected on the narratives that were echoed throughout their childhood homes. They were then given the opportunity to reflect on how representation shapes our perceptions. Then, we spoke about tropes and characters who made us feel strong. Keeping the basic story structure as a roadmap in the back of our minds, we set off to create our own story.
In order to collaboratively create a fiction, we played an interactive game where everyone sat in a circle, and each participant contributed one sentence. Starting with the simple set-up, “There once was a girl who lived in Southern India,” the girls let their imaginations run wild and started crafting one cohesive narrative. As we went around in the circle, each individual built on the previous player’s thoughts. As more and more people went, the story started to take on a life of its own with every girl adding her own detail, spin, or plot point. Together, the girls crafted a compelling mystery where an unexpected family came together against all odds to find peace.
We plotted the various points of the story according to where they fall on the story structure. Some points such as the girl’s love for painting obviously fell into exposition, while finding out that the villain knew more than he let on opened a discussion of whether this fell into rising action or climax. Once we all had reviewed the central points of the story, the larger group split into four separate teams where each represented a section of the story through a different creative medium. Here, the girls were given the space to truly imagine what the story could look like in greater detail.
As the last official section of this facilitation, the groups presented their creative works, bringing the story to life through a skit, a poem, a drawing, and a creative writing piece. While the game focused on establishing what happened in the story, the artistic portion allowed them to explore what characters were feeling throughout the narrative. Overall, this was a joyful series of presentations, demonstrating the power of collaboration and diverse perspectives in storytelling.
Finally, we had a discussion on how it felt to create a story together and the various skills that were needed in order to be successful in this pursuit. We spoke about the power of stories and how we have the ability to shape the conversations around us.
The Lessons We Learned on Campus
After all of the fun we had with the girls and the incredible team, we found ourselves walking away with not only happy memories but also key takeaways for future facilitations:
- Allow participants the space to lean on each other. Asking anyone to speak in front of a large group can be a daunting task. This anxiety can be mitigated by creating small groups for activities or using models such as “pair and share”. This can facilitate a more comfortable environment for individuals to voice their opinions. Both sessions featured small group activities, and this was where we saw the most active and enthusiastic participation from the students. Rather than this turning into an assignment riddled with nerves, it became a collaborative and exploratory place.
- Get comfortable with the language barrier. While English was widely spoken, some girls felt more comfortable expressing themselves in Malayalam. This created moments in both sessions where girls were presenting their creations in their native tongue. At times, we were not able to entirely understand the nuances of the final product apart from what could be gleaned from a quick translation vis a vis one of the volunteers. However, it is less about our personal understanding of the content and more about creating a space where the person sharing feels heard and validated. As long as we understood the major points and were able to continue facilitating the dialogue further, our role was successful.
- Establish rapport before the facilitation. The informal work of establishing relationships before your session will go a long way once you begin to direct people during your activity. When there is already a base foundation for dependability, the planned activities will have a greater chance of operating more smoothly.
- Take the time to localize examples. As both of our facilitations required creative thinking, we found ourselves referencing popular culture during our presentations. When we were giving examples of media, the girls started speaking about their own favorite home-grown films and stories. Entering facilitations with specific examples that may be well-known to the audience can help build trust and a sense of credibility for you as the speaker.
With each experience, we grow and learn and become better in our various roles. We are incredibly thankful to the Bolster Foundation for the opportunity to conduct sessions at the summer camp. We extend our deepest gratitude to everyone involved in making the experience so successful, and we wish everyone prosperity in all future endeavors.
If you are an alumni of the Banyan Impact Fellowship, we encourage you to join the alumni portal at this link.
