My group consisted of 6 members including me. I was the only Sri Lankan with five other Myanmar friends. We had five girls in the group which was one of the strengths I found because it was easier to understand and discuss our ides among each other. Once the group was formed, our next task was to come up with a good topic for the panel discussion.
When it came to deciding a topic, each of us put strong effort to bring out effective ideas for an interesting topic. All of us had marvelous topics in our minds and all of them were fascinating in its own ways. This led us into a confusing situation which put us into trouble to settle with one topic. Therefore to be fair to everyone, we decided to have a vote. After the voting was done, the topic that got the most votes was the one we settled with; Which CSO should be encouraged more for global development? I think our topic was selected in a fair manner to everyone. All of us thought the topic was a very good choice to be spoken out loud. For further consideration, our group decided to reconfirm the topic with our lecturer and so we pointed out the topic to him. He agreed with our topic and therefore we decided to settle down with it for the panel discussion.
Our next step was to decide on who will be the moderator. For this, we considered each of our capabilities in in speaking and the ability in handling a panel in an effective way. Each of the members was given a chance to volunteer or to suggest as the moderator. To be honest, none of us volunteered but, finally we decided on each of our roles to be played.
After this, we did a small brain storming on our topic. This helped us to come up with subheadings that we thought would help us find information regarding the organizations. Thereafter we divided these subheadings to each of the panelists as his/her role to speak with furthermore research. For an example: one person spoke about the government’s role, another spoke about the charity organizations, another about the skill development organizations, etc. Once all of this was done, each one of us did our own research on the given role to be performed.
After the researches done and collected information of all the members, we had group meetings to discuss on our data collection, statistics and incidents that were found regarding this issue. This sharing of information helped all of us to widen our knowledge and to gain a better understanding regarding our topic. All of our group members had well team spirit and showed fine interest in this activity.
Finally, on the day of presentation, even though all of us were quite nervous, I think we played our roles very well. Our lecturer showed quite good interest to our panel discussion. Finally after the discussion was over, the floor was open for questions. I was asked a question regarding my talk, and I think I faced the question in a fare way that made the audience satisfy. Thereafter, my lecturer shared his view of the topic we spoke about and asked some questions which awakened us even more about the topic we spoke on. By this I learnt that each CSO plays their unique role and we cannot categorize them into what is better than the other. They are contextual according to the situation taking place.
In conclusion, I found this panel discussion very interesting. I gained a wide knowledge about civil society and their organizations by all the researches that I did and by the information that my friends shared. I also improved my presentation and leadership skills, team work, time management and not forgetting tolerance and cooperation with group members.
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