Education in the wider community

Workshop with JGU students and Afghan Refugee youth in collaboration with Simurgh Centre, Max Mueller Bhavan, and Afghan Studies Centre, JSIA

The Centre for Afghanistan Studies (CAS) has organised a one-of-a-kind creative writing workshop ‘Aaghaaz’,  in collaboration with the Simurgh Centre in New Delhi. The Simurgh Centre works to create exchanges and conversations across the Afghan diaspora worldwide, and it has also developed into a safe cultural space for the Afghans residing around it, a space for both structured and unstructured conversations. 

Our workshop hosted participant student writers from both O.P. Jindal Global University and the Simurgh Centre. The central experience of the workshop, in the spirit of collaboration, was that each student from O.P. Jindal Global University will be paired with a young Afghan member of the Simurgh Centre, who will work together as partners for all exercises and discussions conducted throughout the workshop, apart from the final pieces, which were penned by each participant individually. 

This workshop brings with it a rare opportunity for students from both the communities to discuss, collaborate, express and channel their literary flair. It allowed participants a platform to explore themes of youth, identity and community that come to shape all persons, but leave each with a different journey, unlike any other. Through this event, young persons with widely distinct experiences from their youth could come together to create meaningful works of prose and poetry. The participant writers had the freedom of expressing themselves in Hindi, English, Urdu, Pashto and Dari. At the end of the workshop, each participant also received a certificate of participation and appreciation.