My Pathfinder Journey by Alia
Pathfinder program was an eye-opening platform on ME = WE equilibrium. This is deep-rooted in our faith to work for a bigger purpose in life to benefit the community. Being part of this journey led me to think deeply of making an impact constructively to my family first before venturing out on other passion projects.
Initially when I joined, my goal was to research on building a faith centered fun i.e. interactive school. The mission was to share the principles and knowledge of faith, which is the guiding compass of our lives, from a young age. With Pathfinder, I observed this mission needed a grass-root level reach. This led me to facilitating my Pathfinder project in understanding my younger brothers’ journey in learning about faith and its impact in their lives. They are aged 16 and 18 years old, one studying high school with interests in biology and fitness, and the elder one is in his first year of university whilst playing cricket for the state team. Now, how might we enhance the faith which is already part of their lives in the form of prayer, so that it can be a meaningful connection with The Creator was the learning objective.
I absolutely loved the meditation sessions by Tanya to start off with, it brought all the virtual participants together in a common space with our mindset. This also showed how fascinating the human mind and experience is, as when at one point I was deeply impacted, a fellow participant felt or thought differently and vice-versa. The detailed content and use of the tool Miro was brilliant in penning and mapping our dynamic ideas. What I enjoyed learning the most was the link between nature and facilitation - like the fungi, which have created an ecosystem, we too must create a change in contributing to the community. My feedback would be to extend the course to dive deep into the main topics and emphasize on practical practice e.g. participants hosting frequent facilitations with a mentor, can make us improve and better reach our goal of graduating out of the course with a tool we can implement. With the facilitation questions, guidance on how to convert the tone and text for our context would have been useful.
My takeaways from the program are many! The main ones being, a deeper understanding of my brothers and the challenges youth face in imbibing the faith in today’s world, and at the same time the immense benefits they gain from following the faith and relying on The Creator as the guiding compass of their life. I learnt how asking questions and waiting to hear their interest in the topic makes for a more useful conversation, than a one-sided one if I were to approach directly. This was the first time I used a formal structured approach to a challenge I could see within my immediate family, even though I have done countless social impact programs externally, for e.g. when building my financial literacy app for Gen Z, the thought never came across to do the same at home, until this program. By the end of it, both my brothers and I had a deeper understanding of each other’s goals in life and aligned it with the love of faith. Also, I had designed and published an engaging children’s prayer book with the help of my family and Qur’an class volunteers with prayers of Prophets like Abraham, Noah and about parents, knowledge and nature with activities for each. This was gifted as my wedding favor in December, which was beneficial for my family at a larger scale and I hope to publish it to help many more!
I see the Pathfinder program being a tool for youth to guide their mission in life beyond themselves, people who are change-makers in the community to find a network, designers and educators who have a role of facilitation as part of their work. This is ideal for an individual with a social project and is looking for a direction in refining their idea to implementation.
