Genesis Global School, Noida
We arrived at Genesis Global School by 3 after a long journey. As soon as we entered the campus we were taken aback by its sheer size and innumerable facilities. They gave us a very cordial welcome and we felt right at home. The topic for our conference was inclusive education and to get us thinking the Genesis School had a great dinner planned out. We were unaware that we would be randomly put into a group and each group would dine differently, higher, middle and lower class. We were all served a different meal depending on which class we were put in and it was amazing to see everyone's reactions on being segregated like this. All of this was reflected in the long reflection session thereafter where we discussed various types of exclusion, not only economic and how we can change to prevent this. We all sat and expressed our thoughts about the dinner and inclusion. It was an utterly exhausting day but a great start to the conference.
The next morning, we were awoken to a blaring wake up call at 6 AM for breakfast after which we had group activities like plantation, arts and sports. We had our opening ceremony where we given a few words by the guests of the conference notably Ms. Papri Gosh, Regional director of round square. We were randomly divided into different groups which were our Barraza groups, Harry Potter themed. We had a Barraza session discussing inclusion and then some more group activities. The Barraza sessions were highly interactive and interesting as we got so many different viewpoints and perspectives.
Sunday, our third day was an utterly exhausting day. We set of at 7:45 for our heritage walk (itihaas) and returned 7 hours later exhausted. We visited the Red Fort and Jama Masjid and it was a great learning experience. It related to inclusion as we saw how different cultures were merged into the Mughal architecture. We learnt a lot about the Mughal empire and their architecture. At 4 we had another Barraza session and activities. The evening was jam packed with cultural night where we saw some spectacular performances and put up our own. Right after this we had a disco night and we all enjoyed dancing tremendously.
Monday, our last day was filled with mixed emotions. We were sad to be leaving, but were overjoyed with the great experience we had. Over the past three days we had bonded very well with our Barraza groups and people from various regions around India. We had our farewell lunch and left Genesis with a much better understanding of inclusion and why it is important in our lives!
-Siddhanth Lath 9B