Visualizing My Amal Past:
Serenity within diverse surroundings is what the above picture reflects which is synonymous with what I experienced in my first two weeks at our Amal Academy fellowship. Introduced to people from all over Pakistan; from Karachi to Peshawar; sharing different thoughts aligned together into one session. Mentally, this was a wholesome experience, quite similar to what you experience when you’re surrounded by nature. In my first week. I was introduced to the concept of safe space by our program manager which reduced the compatibility issues in the squad to minimal. Safe space allowed us to endorse each other’s diverse backgrounds and we got to know one another better. I’d forever be grateful to our program manager Ma’am Zeest and our program associate Ma’am Iqra for creating such a welcoming and safe environment for us all. We never felt like there’ll be any sort of compatibility issues in this group from day one which is a massive plus of being part of Batch 148 at Amal Academy.
As the first two weeks progressed, there were certain activities that not only made us explore our creative side but we begin to connect with each other better as well. Like in the first session, during the icebreaking task of identifying the “Story behind your name”, I was able to connect with a wonderful and extremely humble fellow named Mehwish Zulfiqar. Also part of my first learning group, I was able to share my career goals with her, and her feedback was extremely rejuvenating in terms of setting up my career preferences, she is surely an intelligent person. Another activity in the first week was “connecting the dots through your life map” and then sharing it with others. This was a lifelong learning experience that allowed me to delve into my past memories. I realized my whole life struggle and the sacrifices of people who assisted me to go through this entire journey. In doing so, I got to know another fellow better. His name is Usama Khattak. A cheerful lad, extremely intelligent person, and above all, the limelight of our Fellowship. You can call him 'Mr. Icebreaker’. He’s a fun person to talk to and always provide you with creative solutions for your problems. Through the above activity, Usama and I were able to connect to each other with our relatable thoughts. It just amazes me that despite during the fellowship session, our interaction was extremely limited however off the sessions it got better and better every day. I hope this bromance sustains for years even after this fellowship😂.
The first two weeks also involved some individual honor and helped me explore my creative humor. Creating a meme video on Over-communication was the highlight of the first two weeks. I’m glad I was able to put a smile on some faces 😊
