Introduction:
On February 27th, we hosted our second event of this year’s IHL campaign. While planning this event, our team made it a goal to educate and entertain. With this in mind, we did our best to come up with the perfect challenge -- instead of analyzing a property that already existed, our participants were responsible for making their own! Their goal was to convince our team (the judges), why their cultural property deserves to be protected as a World Heritage site under UNESCO.
Event Agenda:
First, we, the advocates, presented a slideshow with information about IHL, including the four principles. We then covered this year’s campaign theme, The Preservation of Cultural Property. After giving our attendees the necessary information they needed to build their pitches, we explained the criteria that we would use to choose the winning teams. The participants were then assigned teams with their friends and sent to breakout rooms! The only requirements were to make a visual and that everyone in the group must talk; the rest was up to their imagination! After the pitches were presented, it was deliberation time! Although it was difficult to choose the winning teams as everyone had come up with fantastic ideas, we finally decided on two winning teams, who received Red Cross merchandise for their hard work!
Reflection:
Overall, this event was by far one of our favorites! Seeing the creativity and thoughtfulness of our participants really wowed us, and it was intriguing to see how the participants incorporated the criteria and added their own twists. This was a very successful event, however, we did go 30 minutes over the time we predicted. For our next event, we have learned to over predict the time and allot a generous amount of time. After all, time flies when you’re having fun!