Dialogues

The Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project is a student-to-student project whose aim is to raise awareness and educate university students on disarmament issues and the dangers of nuclear proliferation. It achieves this goal through the use of dialogues. So far dialogues have been held with students in India and Pakistan, UK, France and Russia. This has allowed us to meet roughly 1200 students. There have been many setbacks as well as great moments and wonderful students participating in these sessions. The dialogue sessions are the core of the NWIP agenda since it is the means by which we connect with new university students and reach out of our circle.

The project has been adapted to allow us to successfully reach our goals. How does one go about to hold a dialogue session?
Three different levels of preparations:

-National student group:  when established, it is this group that sets the agenda; when a delegation can be received, which places to visit, what type of students

-Reading up and prepare yourself: takes a long time and needs to be an integral part of all our activities, working with the different topics and how to address them

A session looks something like the following:

-Presentation of ourselves, the project and why we feel it is important to discuss these issues

-Medical effects: the common denominator for us as medical students. It has been a way of getting started and to evoke emotions as well as avoiding too detailed discussions on the complicated technicalities of nuclear weapons, something that we do discuss a lot

-Raise hands: everyone that believes that their country needs nuclear weapons to be secure, raise their hands! This is the large section of the dialogue where, depending on what questions or statements that are made, we try to touch upon as many aspects of nuclear weapons as possible and speak of our views regarding this

How can one tell if it has been a successful dialogue? Different evaluation methods have been discussed for the participants. Getting feedback on how they perceived the session is invaluable, putting down on paper three things to keep and three things to change. The overall impression that we get from the dialogue, how our arguments were taken, and the amount of students interested in joining us and turn up at the training-session is also a strong indicator, but not fully satisfactory, to the level of success. Evaluation procedures need to be more of a focus as the group expands and there are strong national groups working nationally – making it possible to have sustainable activities with a chance of measuring change in opinion over time.

 

 
Training Sessions & Workshops

To ensure the NWIP lasts and evolves it is not enough for an international group of students to head out once every two years to hold these dialogues. The momentum gained at the dialogues is immense, keeping it alive is very hard. There has to be a national group of students, dedicated to keeping up the work, if we are to have the desired impact and proceed in our work. Hence, the second goal of the project is capacity building and empowerment of students to undertake continuous activities in the nuclear weapon states. We try to hold training sessions in every city where there is a dialogue. It gives us a chance to sit down together to explain the project outline in more detail. The interested students have the chance to ask more questions and are not left asking after a dialogue session “we have learned so much and would like to know more but how do we get started?”. A basic outline for such a session, having 15-25 participants:

-Introduction to the project: how did it start, what is the structure, the rationale behind the project, how do we hold dialogues * Medical effects – how do nuclear weapons produce its effects, both short- and long-term.

-Nuclear weapon basics: arsenals, treaties, ways of approaching different pronuclear arguments

-Dialogue technique and role-play: what is important to think about when holding a dialogue and how are we trying to convey our message

The last and most important part is composing a Plan of Action. This will be made by a small group of the students that are willing to start up work nationally and should include: who are the members of the team, a time when the group will convene again, goals to achieve – e.g. hold a dialogue in six months, intermediate goals, funding, communication within the group (and many more!). By having this dual approach, dialogues and trainings, we believe we have found a good base to expand the NWIP but also to recruit new students to IPPNW as a whole.

 

 
Communication strategy
 
The method used has been adopted from the Oxford Research Group and reworked to fit our particular settings of 50-100 students. It is important that one has a good strategy and rough plan while keeping an open dialogue with such a large group, and at the end to make good conclusions while still maintaining the interest of the students.

 
What do we mean when speaking about dialogue technique as a communication strategy? There are a few fundamental things that can be said to be representative of a dialogue: active listening, mutual respect, a deepening process, there are agreements and disagreements. Each time when engaged in dialogue one has to be prepared to change some views. Holding a discussion in this way, an official way, in most cases prevents a discussion from becoming too confrontational with no exchange of opinion, advancement of the discussion and deepening of understanding, which would mean that there would be no chance to tie up the session and attract students. Sometimes of course there is a need to be confrontational to inspire the dialogue – a skill hard to master.

 
Before the dialogue the delegation sits down to plan a rough draft for the session. It should include amongst other things: specific issues related to that nation that we need to be aware of, the different topics we want to discuss and if there are any advances towards disarmament already. The second part of the preparations are: presentation – who and what to include, who will cover what topics, who will be the chair of the meeting etc. The Chair function has been used to make sure that the dialogue advances and that everyone, both the delegation and the audience, contributes during the session.

 
One can learn a great deal about small things that are crucial when speaking to an audience by trial and error. This has led to the drawing up of a list of “Do’s and Don'ts” that can be studied before a dialogue. Many of these points are obvious but are easy to forget when in the middle of a session. A few examples: present only one point at a time, speak slowly and clearly, respect and notify the chair if you have a contribution to make, make sure you have fully understood any questions posed, try to stay with your set agenda, do not let a few loud students get all the attention etc. Last but maybe most importantly, you need to be fully aware of and in control of your body language.