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Observations

1. One of the biggest challenges in the program was the fact that all
nine participants were men! We had hoped for a 50-50
representation of men and women, but we had to accept the reality
and work with it. Lalitha being the sole woman in the group,
attracted some amount of gender work and the presence of two
other women (Wasundhara and Anuradha) as guest lecturers helped
to bring more women in the group. Diversity work based on
identities could have been done in a more intense way. The group
was not ready for it, and we respected that. We also focussed more
on diversity in the here and now, and that was a rich experience for
all of us.

2. The second challenge was the fact that we had five people from
the same organization out of the nine participants! However this
dynamics didn’t impact the group as much as we expected. The
diversity among the five of them helped in this area.

3. The third challenge was the different levels of personal growth We believe both of us as facilitators walked the talk. We lived the
experiences that the participants had – some have done 3 labs, some values that we taught in the program – respect, empathy,
have never attended anything to do with personal growth and some authenticity, freedom of choice, sensitivity and valuing diversity. I
had a lot of theoretical understanding but lacked experiential believe this was the most challenging as well as the most liberating
awareness. This made us design sessions at the common aspect of the program. We just have to embody and live it rather
denominator level. Maybe we need to specify a pre-requisite of a lab than teach it!
when we offer this next time.
Mentoring:
Having a man and woman facilitator was a great combination and
also the diversity between both of us as people was so visible in the Mentoring is an important aspect for the directional growth of these
here and now. The greatest learning for us and for the group was three vectors. On the last day of the program, we had three
how we both can be very effective in our own ways without having participants assigned to a mentor.
to copy another’s style.

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