July 12, 2009

The first World Unity Sunday Seminar of the session, 2009-2010, was a cool class arranged in City Montessori School(CMS) Gomti Nagar Campus Auditorium under the aegis of the World Unity Education Department (WUED) on July 12, 2009. It began with the welcome address by Mr Raza Hasnain Naqvi, Senior Sub-Editor & Chief Coordinator, Sunday Seminar. He explained the objective of organizing the seminar that was going to be cool despite the heat wave prevailing over the plains of India. The session was aimed at opening the minds of the attendees to the wide variety of topics available for discussion. Ms Sangeeta Negi, Assistant-Coordinator, Sunday Seminar, catered to the attendance record of the participants.

There were about 250 students from all the campuses to attend the session. The honour to inaugurate the session was conferred upon two of the youngest students present, Master Maaz Ali, student of class VI-A(CMS Mahanagar II Campus) and Master Abhishek Srivastava, student of class VI-F(CMS Gomti Nagar Campus). Everyone joined the chorus as the school prayer was synchronised on the synthesiser by Mr Sanjeev Chauhan, music teacher, CMS Gomti Nagar Campus.

Mr Rishi Khanna discharged the responsibility of giving a presentation on World Unity Education. He elaborated on the truth that unity has always been there in our societies. We should unite and be one to counter contemporary problems like terrorism and global warming.

The need of unity in the modern world was emphasized by the documentary, Heal the World. This was the video of a song by the late singer, Michael Jackson. The documentary depicted how kids united to make the world a better place to live in.

The documentary was followed by a group discussion among the students. For the purpose, 22 groups of 10 students from a single class were given two minutes to discuss and decide on the core issue they would like to discuss in 10 minutes.

The issues that emerged for discussion ranged from Michael Jackson to empowering the International Court of Justice to safeguard the rights of children. There also were issues like child exploitation, population explosion, deforestation, impact of wars on humans, exploitation of resources, terrorism and upliftment of women in the society.

Mr Jagdish Gandhi, founder-manager City Montessori School, joined the Sunday
Seminar congratulating the attendees for the chance to be a guest at such a wonderful program. He added that such programs shall certainly open the young and innocent minds of children to new and novel ideas. Such interactive sessions are important to develop the qualities of eloquent speech, which is an essential prerequisite to emerge as a leader of the world.

Two students were selected to paint their imagination on the board in the auditorium. Ms Unnati Kala, class VIIA(CMS Mahanagar II Campus) did her best to bring out the effects of global warming on the board, while Master Ritesh Upadhyay of class VIIIA(CMS Mahanagar(nb) Campus) painted his version of a child appealing to the judges of the world for world unity and world peace. This was followed by a PowerPoint presentation by Mr Naqvi on some of the most famous paintings of the world and some of the most expensive paintings in the world.

The show concluded with a vote of thanks to all those present at the Sunday Seminar. Mr Faisal Zafar Ansari, Creative Writer, WUED, was responsible for documentation of the proceedings.