Train Leaders in Asia for Peace and Sustainability

Dear Kind Donors and Supporters,

We are thrilled to announce the graduation of 12 SENS 2026 participants. Your generous contributions through GlobalGiving allowed us to carry out SENS 2026 to our deep satisfaction despite very limited financial resources.

Another Successful Season

Our cohort this year consisted of 12 people with very diverse ethnic, religious, national, and geographical backgrounds, representing six different countries in Asia. The spirit of diversity manifested itself throughout the three months of SENS 2026, in which students heard personal stories coming out of others’ local milieu, shared their traditional costumes, and taught each other their traditional dances. At times on a field trip, three or four women would appear wearing hijabs loaned by our one Muslim student. After all of that time spent together, national and religious boundaries seemed to become lighter, and human-to-human connections came to the fore. A Thai neighbor in Ratchaburi who attended our graduation ceremony with her two teenage daughters remarked how rare it was for her to see young adults being so supportive and accepting of each other, as each presented their final talk to the group. “It felt like watching a family,” she said.

Alongside the director, SENS 2026 was run by a strong work team of SENS alumni who have been with SENS for the second or third time. Now with much greater knowledge of SENS, Adity (nickname) from India and Lien (nickname) from Vietnam came back to lead tutoring groups for the second year. Working with friends we know well allowed us to focus on our own tasks, trusting that we always had each other's backs.

In every SENS classroom, learning with joy is always one of our top priorities. Understanding that the traditional classroom often feels boring and teacher-centric, we at SENS engage students with interactive activities to ensure they stay active and involved. And in SENS 2026, we once again successfully created this learning environment for our students. Some participants with a teaching background mentioned that they would like to re-create this engaging space for their students back home.

Highlights and Challenges

• On the positive side, the students in the 2026 cohort were remarkably caring and solicitous of each other and the cohort as a whole. Some of the students were particularly good at seeing if someone was left out, and if they were, inviting them into a small group or a counseling session.
• For the first time ever, we combined our field trip to a forest temple with three days of a Power Analysis workshop with one of Thailand’s best group facilitators, for an especially deep experience in a rural and forest environment.
• Like in previous years, teaching about inequality or climate change to a new group in an ever-changing environment allowed us to innovate and refine our syllabus. Small changes added up to more thorough engagement with issues and new ways of drawing students in. A small example was demonstrating exactly how scientists measure things like CO2 and temperature, in a context where social media allows denial of what are in reality tried and true methods.
• Au (nickname), the leader of the afternoon classes and primary assistant to the director, introduced student drafting and delivery of a videotaped news report as a new learning tool, and students did amazingly well sharing about issues in their home countries.
• On the challenging side, it was surreal sometimes to be working to build a community with a deep understanding of how violence, severe inequalities, authoritarianism, and climate devastation occur and can be met courageously, at the very same time that a genocide against Palestinians continued into its third year, a major new and unjustified war was launched against Iran, the country of Cuba was blockaded, and immigration police detained and even murdered citizens in the US. The personal challenge came from wanting to keep abreast of developments in the world while needing to avoid the heaviness and exhaustion that even physically distant chaos and violence can bring. Meeting that challenge moving forward will allow us to bring a consistent and appropriate warmth and light-heartedness into our support for students’ growth, despite horrifying world events. 
• There were moments when every member of the work team seemed to be exhausted and overwhelmed, and this was a signal to once again make our relationships within the work team a priority, even if it means completing program work to a lesser degree of perfection.
• Finally, despite the student cohort being wonderfully supportive and cooperative, and achieving some of the best scores in our 2^nd practice test that we’ve ever had, it seemed to some of us that more students struggled with paying attention to in-class processes for extended periods than in the past. The director believes that in future SENS programs we will need to explicitly address our relationships with AI, social media, and the Internet’s ever-present demand to be stimulated with new information. This will likely involve new program and lifestyle remedies that go beyond banning screens in the morning class.

At this critical time in human history, we believe our encouragement of young changemakers to form deep and durable relationships across national, ethnic, and religious lines is an essential groundwork for a bigger transformation. With your support, we have slowly but steadily expanded the network of young activists and educators across Asia who are engaged in both the inner and outer dimensions of that work. That has immediate impacts in creating a joyful and safe learning space, and in the longer-term bodes well for working together in the future. Thank you for helping to make this happen!

Please consider sharing this report with your network to help amplify our work!

With deep gratitude,

The SENS Work Team