Mike Muikia, a young Kenyan who recently came back home after the intensive Action for Life programme, shares his experience and learning during the programme.

Core team member Alex Birnberg wrote this summary of the last month of his experiences with his AfL team in Ukraine:

Ten years ago a Chinese teacher launched an initiative to ‘develop a new generation of change-makers’. Today it is happening. Mike Brown reports from Africa…

Two days before Rajmohan Gandhi ended his terms as President of Initiatives of Change (IofC) International, he and his wife Usha had a dialogue with 40 mostly young people from 20 countries, including Afghanistan and Iran, China and Korea, Sudan and Guatemala, Ukraine and Lebanon.

After two months of intensive training with IofC’s Action for Life programme, a new generation of change makers sets out to work with IofC teams grappling some of the core issues in Africa, Eastern Europe, Indonesia and the Pacific.

Our train to Jamshedpur in eastern India was due to leave at 6:30pm but because of the danger of Naxalite (a Maoist movement) attacks en route the rail authorities had delayed the departure until 2:00am… After 8 hours of dinner, songs, photos and cards, we boarded the train, found our berths, chain-locked our bags and shut our eyes… We woke next morning immersed in the world of Indian railways: food and drink peddlers, street musicians (some of them children), cleaners, beggars, families, security guards and other colorful characters — you couldn't find five minutes without somebody walking through.

Today AfL’s moved into another phase of ‘action’. Four teams began leaving Asia Plateau for ‘field work’ in various Indian cities. This preliminary action is a trial run of the longer ‘action teams’ in the Pacific, Asia, Africa and Europe, starting in January. Watch this space.

Our stories matter, as we found when we shared with each other. Through trusting each other in this safe space, we found that, surprisingly, each of us had an experience that was of significance to others.

Today, inspired by the practice of Mahatma Gandhi, we took a day in silence and also a gentle fasting (only having fruit for lunch). A time to reflect, to go deeper into ourselves and discover what is there. Here were some of our experiences.

Today AfL spent the morning evaluating their experience of the Life Matters course. Along with looking over the course material, we also debated the bigger vision of running such a course.