[sl/intern/teen] Ishmael Beah & My 1st Event!

“You have to find hope in hopelessness itself…the human spirit is enormously strong,” were the final words I heard from Ishmael Beah as I exited Second Life. Although he related it to the war in Sierra Leone and his missing family, it is a powerful statement that we can all relate to and incorporate into our own lives. Unfortunately, I could not stay to hear the various questions people had for Ishmael, but I did have wonderful help from fellow TSL residents who filled me in on the questions presented to him and his elegant responses. I am getting a little ahead of myself though, but I just wanted to begin with that quote because it really left a wonderful and lasting memory.

Let me start at the beginning, since it is after all the most convenient place to begin. Hello! I am Nafiza, or Nafiza GKid. First thing I should clarify is that I am NOT an adult; I have the last name GKid because I was brought into Teen Second Life by Global Kids when I first joined their Virtual Video Project program. Currently, I am a Global Kids Intern on TSL and my very first ever online-facilitated event was this one, in which Ishmael Beah was streamed into TSL on the Eye4You Alliance island (10/18/07). I joined this program because…well there are several reasons. The most obvious is because I feel strongly about global issues and love seeing other people’s perspectives on these issues. The other reason is that…I wanted to have this experience—not for a resume or a college application—but for myself. I think that if I can prove to myself that I am capable of doing something, then I can prove it to any other person in the world.
Another part of it is that I have facilitated a workshop in the GK Annual Conference, so I did want to see what it would be like to do something like that in Second Life. Trust me when I say, that although you have to concern yourself with public speaking and expression in real life, dealing with some of the messes that can occur in Second Life can be somewhat more frustrating. At the same time, it is much easier to “brush-off” misbehavior on SL than it is to do in real life. The one thing that makes doing this in SL so hard is getting people to stay active, interested, involved, and to keep their attention. Also, I think they were very anxious to hear from Ishmael that they became impatient and also frustrated/bored when I was doing the screening. I can’t say that I blame them because it can be pretty boring to just sit there and watch someone typing. I tried to ask them questions to keep them engaged though, I don’t know how much it helped, but they seemed to respond very quickly and well to the questions so that was a good sign. One thing I can say for sure is that they did enjoy and they were somewhat mesmerized by Ishmael while he was speaking because they responded to all the things he said. Some times in awe, after hearing the reality of war, and sometimes with applause for his elegant words. Although they did not have the same privilege as I did to meet him in person, I think they still understood him to be the warm but strong individual he is just by hearing his voice and words. Lee Soothsayer commented that the event was “deep and very informative”.
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