We had an extremely eventful day, centered around the action projects that Humanity in Action fellows are expected to complete in teams. These projects are centered around one particular issue within a larger problem and serve as the culminating product of our time in Lyon. The many lectures, presentations, site visits, and conversations up to this point were intended to provide us with the framework, background, and current tools to approach our topics of interests.

The first part of our morning involved brainstorming the various problems and topics we are interested in creating an action project around. As expected, a myriad of diverse and complex subjects were brought up by the fellows; these topics included immigration and integration, LGBT rights, sex work, anti-Islam sentiments, and intercultural discourse in France. Our brainstorming process was facilitated by community organizer and former director of Humanity in Action, France,  Tara Dickman. In order to provide us with a better understanding of an action-oriented project, Tara presented her work as a community organizer around racial profiling and stop-and-frisk situations of Arab and Black youth in France. I must say Tara's work was extremely impressive and demonstrated the value of community organization and the power of collective action with good and strategic plans.

After a wonderful and filling lunch, we proceeded to discussed action projects within our respective groups. Afterwards, we held an open forum for each team to present their initial ideas and proposals with the larger group. Each team had their chance to discuss their ideas and received critical feedback and questions from Tara and the rest of the fellows. This process proved to be helpful in allowing us to posit our ideas and get multiple perspectives and guidance on how we can better refine our projects.

After Tara, we had a workshop on public speaking, led by the compelling and engaging Ladji Real. We started out with some stretches, as Ladji made the point that public speaking requires a huge amount of body consciousness. We moved out cheeks, jaws, necks, ankles, backs, and basically every other part of our bodies in order to loosen some tensions and prepare ourselves to participate in a public speaking workshop. We dived right in, as Ladji asked for a volunteer to introduce themselves in a speech to the group. No one volunteered.



So I was chosen to be first. It was an intense experiences as I was put on the spot to gather my thoughts, make them coherent, and speak to the entire group while standing in front of them, the audience in a semi-circle setting. After I received feedback of the positives and negatives, which were all extremely helpful, others in our group volunteered. Overall each person did wonderful in their own way and allowed for the group to receiver a series of wise advice on public speaking. Though the day was coming to an end and the group was feeling low energy, Ladji was a phenomenal facilitator and had everyone entertained as well as engaged. The workshop reinvigorated the group and gave us the last piece of excitement to end the day with a very thought-provoking film, "Des Francais sans Histoire," by Raphael Pillosio.

The film dealt with the Nomad population in France and their hardships with discrimination and prejudice during the WWII period. In general, it was a particularly challenging film to sit through, given the extremely violent and suppressive history of the Nomads in Europe. For some fellows, the film was an eye-opener, particularly French fellows just having learned some of the history of treatment that was directed at the Nomads in France at the time period. Moreover, the film was challenging on an intellectual level. Given France's stance on minority issues and the countries reluctance to acknowledge minority groups (in the context of race and ethnicity), I found it interesting and captivating that the nomadic people were given a categorization based on their ethnic and group identity. As I spend more time in France, I have come to realize that there are multiple levels of nuances and complexities around issues of diversity in this country. Each day, I am constantly being challenged and learning more about how societies can look when their governments and history revolve around certain historic events.