PANAJI
The third edition of ‘Yuva Sadbhav’ was organised by Sadbhav, an endeavour of the Society of Pilar, in collaboration with Fr Agnel College, Pilar and the NGO UZWAAD, was recently held at the Pilar Pilgrim Centre, Pilar, to foster Inter religious solidarity and harmonious living.
As many as 97 participants from Carmel College (Nuvem), Fr Agnel College (Pilar), Nirmala Institute of Education (Panaji), St Joseph Vaz College (Sancoale), Dhempe College (Miramar), Goa Multi-Faculty College (Dharbandora), MES College (Zuari Nagar), Rosary College (Navelim) and Government College (Sanquelim) participated in the Yuva Sadbhav.
An interesting part of Yuva Sadbhav 2024 was a workshop on street plays to empower youth to promote communal harmony through street plays, especially on campus. It was facilitated by Sendra Pereira, Assistant Professor (Philosophy, Dhempe College), Amreen Sheikh (Secretary, Uzwaad), Veda Desai, (Treasurer, Uzwaad) and Jeevan Naik (founding member, Uzwaad), and members of Uzwaad.
At the outset, Dr Fr Elvis Fernandes SFX, Convenor of Sadbhav, delivered the keynote address on the topic ‘Interreligious dialogue on campus: Building understanding and respect among students’.
This was followed by an interactive session on ‘Overcoming prejudice on campus and building human solidarity’, facilitated by Gayathri Rao Konkar, Student Counsellor at Nirmala Institute of Education and Goa Institute of Management.
Both these sessions focused on building interreligious solidarity on campus by overcoming prejudice.
The Uzwaad team also conducted an interactive session on the theme ‘Building Bridges: Promoting Communal Harmony and Unity’.
The day’s proceedings were wrapped up by Architect Tallulah D’Silva and a member of Sadbhav. She called upon students to step up on stage and share their experiences, learnings and how they would integrate these learning in their lives and about the practical ways that they would engage in.
The programme ended with Dr Fr Frederico Rodrigues, Principal of Fr Agnel College, Pilar, presenting mementos and certificates to resource persons and students respectively.
Ambrin Beig, a member of Sadbhav, was the programme coordinator. She was closely supported by Irene George, student counsellor at Fr Agnel College, Pilar.
Marisha Gonsalves compered the programme while Amelia Coral (Assistant Professor, Fr Agnel College of Arts & Commerce, Pilar) proposed the vote of thanks.
All participants expressed their satisfaction with the workshop.
Chaitali Mulimani, FYBCom from Fr Agnel College, Pilar, said, “The street play workshop was meaningful and it empowered young minds to foster a sense of social responsibility, to promote unity and harmony among diverse communities and to address social issues and create positive change”.
Snehal Patil, another student, from Nirmala Institute of Education, Altinho added, “All sessions were very informative, eye-opening, interactive, inspiring. Its objectives were fulfilled. I am going to take with me a lot of courage to handle the inter-religious issues happening in public. I will be vocal about the problems and try my best to resolve them in some or other way.”
