Two days workshop on Awaken Citizen Program by Ramakrishna Mission (New Delhi)

Report on two-days workshop sponsored by Ramakrishna Mission

(New Delhi)

Awaken Citizen program was scheduled on15th &16th April 2022 on Friday & Saturday  by Mrs Sunanda Ganguli, Mr Dharmendra, Mr Sourav and Mr Abhijeet in the presence of 50 teachers from different schools like Sunrise Public School, Tagore School, Army Public School, Moga Devi school, BRCM School at Shree Krishna Pranami Public School, Siwani Mandi  which was commence at  8:30 am . The 2-day facilitators’ development workshop focused  to equip the teachers on a the right techniques to inculcate the values and virtues in students in their day-to-day circumstances.

Program details:

 DAY 1 [15^th April 2022]

The session started with an introduction of the resource persons along with the teachers, Mr Sunil Sharma(Principal) of SKPPS welcomed the resource persons and participants.Mr SS Balhara(Director) in his opening address he emphasized on the importance of Awakened Citizen training program It was a two-day workshop which was taken by the master facilitators of the RamaKrishna Mission under the expert guidance of their training coordinator Mr. Dharmendra and Mrs. Sunanda .

On the first day teachers were addressed by different facilitators where they explained the meaning of ACP, it’s objectives, the different ways to deal with various circumstances and real-life situations.

What is Awakened Citizen Program?

It is a three-year structured and graded value education program for students in middle school, which is being delivered by the Ramakrishna Mission - New Delhi, in over 5800 schools all over India. It is deeply aligned with the New Education Policy.

Objectives of the Awakened Citizen Program:

• The Awakened Citizen Program emphasizes that each child is unique and has infinite potential; education is the unfolding of this potential which can be manifested as excellence in every walk of life.
• The program is designed in a discussion-oriented manner where the students think deeply about various real-life and age-appropriate situations. The students think about, discuss and discover the consequences of various choices and hence get armed with a decision-making framework for life.

The main approach of the programme  was to expand the vision of oneself from a narrow and limited individual to a broad  personality, encompassing the community, the nation and the world. In today’s world many children are stressed and confused because they are not armed with the right tools to face real-life problems and to make the right choices. To bridge this gap, the teachers are trained as they are the best mentors and guides to align and put  child’s mind on the right path and make them realize their complete potential with intrinsic greatness. Learning through ‘self-discovery’ is the best tool that a teacher can arm their student with innate spirituality of immense goodness; student merely requires to be shown an illumined path leading to exploration of hidden qualities.

As Swami Vivekananda quoted, “Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in Man”. To foster this thought, keeping in view the ‘universal possibilities’ and ‘unique possibilities’ which every individual already has.

Inside each one of us, there is a source of infinite strength“. This was beautifully portrayed through an 8-minute film which showed the various human possibilities. The entire workshop was quite lively and informative with the enthusiastic audience of the well trained and experienced teachers from different schools of Haryana who interacted well with the fabulous faculty and ended up gaining more information to make the future citizens of our country awakened and enlightened. All modules were well-explained through short videos taken from the real-life experiences of Swami Vivekananda that kept all of us engrossed into the new findings which motivated us to welcome these teachings into our classroom discussions.

DAY 2 [16^th April 2022]

 Second day commenced at 9am in the presence of Mr SS Balhara (Director) ,Mr Sunil Sharma(Principal) of SKPPS along with the participants of 1st day. In this session all the participants were  divided  into two groups in which the quick brush up was given and different topics based on  six universal possibilities like  Recognizing the Sacred (Shraddha),  Being Heroic, Seeking Perfection, Expanding Yourself and being the Truth Seeker were demonstrated by all the teachers of both the groupsgroups in which teachers were supposed to engage the students by asking questions from them.

At the  end of the workshop  all the participants were awaded  with certificate accompanied with vote of thanks by Mr SS Balhara( Director) of SKPPS .

By: Varsha Mishra