Alumni

Applying Knowledge and Experience from
IATSS Forum & Paying Forward to Community

Participant's Voices

Sachin

  • Country : India
  • Forum : 62nd batch(2019 Autumn Forum)
Hello everyone! Greetings from India! I am Dr.Sachin Barbde, a public health physician working in not for profit organization called Ekjut in state of Jharkhand, India. I am involved in developing a community based mental health intervention for indigenous people in rural parts of Jharkhand. I believe in participation and our work is based on principle of participation i.e. participatory learning and action approach to tackle problems of health, gender based violence, adolescent problems, urban homelessness. I am really excited to meet all of you and could not wait further. When I knew about IATSS Leadership program in last year, the first thought came in my mind about the culture and innovation in Japan and the very purpose of this program to develop the concept of Asian Leadership. I believe in diversity, equity and empathy as my core principles. I am really happy to share my thoughts, emotions and learnings to fellow participants from 10 diverse countries. We as a team will also learn mutually and about the Japanese people, places and culture during this program. We as human are really concern about the existential problems like climate crisis. So we have to work to achieve sustainable developmental goals within the estimated time frame. The need of hour is to work together to solve the problems and solutions could be out of box and diverse. The beauty of different cultures, languages, foods, costumes is mind blowing and we in India always believe that unity in diversity as we are truly a diverse nation. Thank you very much for providing this great opportunity to experience the diversity and work for sustainable developmental goals. I look forward to meet u all in person.
It was a roller-coaster ride as a fellow participant with fun, emotions, learnings, memories, friendships and much more… I am able to suppress my crying but feeling deeply emotional. The participants are now lifelong friends with sharing and caring with each other. I really amazed that some of the best candidates are chosen for this program and how they will interact, will there be team building or everyone will busy on his professional development as a leader. But fortunately such things did not happen here and instantly we became a family and it continues until the end of the program and will be forever. I love you, guys..miss u.. When I applied to this program and got selected, I have 2 major objectives and two personal objectives. Major objectives were I was very much impressed with the idea of collaborative leadership, mentioned in the website and second how to deal with diversity. What I learned from IATSS forum course is how to respect diversity and how it contributes to overall development. The different culture, language, dress, religion, it broadens my perspective. I was very naïve about these things before. But during interactions I knew many things and I started to listen empathetically to these subjects. The last 10 days we have a group activity and it taught me different lessons. It started from how to choose the topic, which should be the criteria and we very systematically score each topic and finally chose one of the neglected topic of mental health and discrimination of it. Every member from our team is unique with different abilities and insights and coincidently we took our role as per our strengths naturally without asking oneself so like one is good at framework designing, other is smart in logical thinking, one is good at report making, other is good at pushing us further. So It creates synergy in the group .and I fully appreciate that the topic which is technical and related to medical field but everyone never complained and took part enthusiastically and done a great job. One of the beautiful thing is they are very much committed to implement this project in India and are ready to give their time and skills. What I learned from IATSS forum course is how to respect diversity and how it contributes to overall development. The different culture, language, dress, religion, it broadens my perspective. I was very naïve about these things before. But during interactions I knew many things and I started to listen empathetically to these subjects. The Asian Cultural Day was real testimony for myself as we(India) were not sure how to perform and what to perform. I never dance or performed on the stage. But due to my team there was no hesitation and I decided that I should try each one and not too afraid of. As my friend Khamala told us our job is to make fun so that audience have a laugh. So I decided to be as funny as possible. And we performed well without much practice. Everyone worked hard to make the program successful and we learned how to plan, manage and execute the things with team. The volunteers supported us wholeheartedly., I wanted to convey my sincere thanks to all IATSS staffs. They are incredible human beings, hardworking, very supportive and kind enough. We are really fortunate to get them. They took care of us as a family member. They worked so hard to make us learn. The designing and planning was done meticulously. I assure you that whichever I learned here will apply during my work and will contribute for betterment of my community as a change maker. And we as GULBAHAR team will implement our project successfully. Thank you very much. I wish all of you to stay happy and healthy. ARIGATU GOSAIMAZ!!!

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