Thursday, August 2, 2018

Habib University

This post is by Rich

It's 9:50pm on Thursday August 2nd and we've just returned from an evening visit to Habib University which was really, really cool. It's been a long day, as every day has been long, but I didn't want to miss Habib, a place I've heard so much about.

Habib University was founded in 2012, with Mohsin's friend Wasif Rizvi as president. It's the first expressly liberal arts university in Pakistan, a country with perhaps 1,000 colleges and universities. Most of the colleges and universities provide technical or business training. While Habib does offer majors in computer science and electrical engineering, as well as social policy and other liberal arts fields, every student must study a liberal arts core. The school was started by the Habib family, a major banking family in Pakistan. We drove there after session today, met with several administrators, went on a tour of the facility, and had dinner. It was very, very impressive - a brand-new space with the latest in design computers, film studio, library, swimming pool, tennis court, etc. The school's motto is "Every human being's worth is in their Yoshin." The word "Yoshin" is an Arabic word meaning "thoughtful self-cultivation." Their five core values are beauty, respect, excellence, passion, and service. The architecture really struck me. It is not like any other university I've been to. It does not try to be Oxford or Yale - it's designed appropriate for its space, and I think defines a new Pakistani architecture. Lots of open air spaces, wide hallways, plenty of meeting spaces, large indoor and outdoor auditoriums. The school currently has 650 students and is growing fast - expanding to close to 900 in two weeks, and more after that. This spring they graduated their first-ever class, and Mohsin's son Ali was one of the graduates. All of the members of his inaugural class as considered co-founders.



 I spent time chatting with Rahdeen Ali (wearing yellow in the picture above), who is the manager of the Writing Center. It's one of the first Writing Centers at any university in Pakistan. Mohsin was helpful its its creation. Rahdeen and I discussed writing centers and ideas for promoting and improving her work. I also chatted with Yasmin Bano, an administrator of Habib, about expanding the community service program. These people are very smart, very serious, and committed to the goal of making Habib one of the world's top 100 universities by 2030. I wouldn't be against them. I promised to do some workshops at Habib when I return to Karachi.


I was thrilled to unite with Yasmin Bano, who I met at the 2002 ABL conference at the Mzizima Primary School in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, and with R____, who I met at the 2000 ABL Millennium Conference here in Karachi. It was great to be together with them and with Mohsin, both to remember the conferences, and to realize that here we are, 16-18 years later, still doing the work.

The quote "those that love sausage and respect the law should never watch either of them being made" is traditionally attributed to Mark Twain, and generally means that the process of creation can be messy. Today was the sausage-making day of our student program. We spent the day at The School of Writing offices. The students arrived about 9:30, and all had selected two pieces of writing for the final exhibition, as we had asked. We worked with each student one-on-one to go through the photographs they took on our two field trip days, and asked them to select three for the exhibition. Once that process was complete, we assembled together in the main space for a series of warm-up exercises led by Julia and Alan, then divided up into two groups, each with about 12 students. Julia and Amtul took one group for the next three hours, while Alan had the other group. After messy sausage-making (metaphorically), each group emerged with a fantastic performance. Julia and Amtul's group created two scenes, one of Empress Market, and the other of the Shri Laxmi Narayan Temple, each including movement, words, and sounds. Alan's group used drums, words, sounds, rhythm, and melody to write and perform an original song, "Imagine Karachi."  At 3:30 the groups came back together and performed for each other, and made minor tweaks. What the kids did, and the facilitators facilitated, in three hours, was impressive to watch. It was very-good sausage making.

As I've discussed with all the facilitators, this week is an experiment. We won't know how to do it until we do it. It's a beautiful, magical, rare opportunity, to have a group of master teachers together with 25 students and a full week to work with them. It's an experiment in what's possible in teaching and learning. It's an experiment in communicating across difference. It's a learning experience for all of us. And it looks like it's going to end with some darn good sausage.



On Friday we will meet again at 10am, to work the performances and practice for the final reading. After lunch we will walk over to T2F ("The Second Floor"), a community arts space, to prepare for the final exhibition, which is scheduled for 3-6pm. In addition to the theater and music performances, the students' photography (some 75 images) will be on display, and each student will read a piece of their writing. It should be pretty cool.

At the end of today's session we held a quick debrief, then gave each participant a Post-It note and asked them to write a few thoughts. Here are some:

"I enjoying a lot last four days we make so much."
"Last days we make so much fun with Sir Alan"
"We built knowledge and learned a lot. Keep it up!"
"In these four days I got to see my city in a new way."
"The whole training was just amazing which was a blend of writing, photography, acting, and singing. Really thank Brendan, Julia, Alan, Rich, Sir Mohsin, the Andover Breadloaf & The School of Writing for this opportunity."
"Overall session was learningful and enjoyable. All the teachers were loving and great."
"This past week was a lifetime experience for me, got a chance to meet new people, saw many new faces and got a chance to work with them really boosted my teamwork skills and confidence."

I look forward to the final exhibition at T2F tomorrow, I do not look forward to leaving Karachi on Saturday morning, and I *do* look forward to seeing old friends and making new ones in Mumbai starting Sunday, and our work there next week.

Thanks for reading,
Rich





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