KASSID Winter Meeting 2022: International Cooperation Toward Global Challenges

The KASSID scholars & KAS Thailand employees after a successful two-day workshop.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jittipat Poonkham (Thammasat University) gave a lecture to the students about the current global political situation.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jittipat Poonkham (Thammasat University) asked the students to brainstorm which international problems are the most pressing at the moment.

One of the KASSID scholars is presenting her group's work on how Thailand can address global issues.

A KASSID scholar presents what his group worked out to be the global issues that need to be prioritized.

KASSID Scholar listens to the other presentations.

Dr. Céline-Agathe Caro, Director of the KAS Thailand, explains what Soft-Power means in the context of a country or a nation.

The students are participating in a game that Dr. Caro devised to illustrate how a country's Soft-Power works.

On the second day of the workshop, the students learned about non-violent communication.

Through creative tasks, the students learned how to use empathy for a better communication with others.

Apart from international relations and geopolitical topics, Dr. Céline-Agathe Caro, Director of the KAS Thailand led the second session on “Soft Power” through a game to illustrate what is soft power, how is it shaped, and how does it work with one’s perception. The session continued with a discussion on the German soft power perceived in Thailand and the Thai perception toward Germany. The KASSID scholars saw that the Thais’ perception toward Germany is relatively positive. For example, German cars and German products are considered “high quality”, and it can easily convince consumers to buy the products. Therefore, this is one of the most obvious German soft power in Thailand. At the end of the session, the scholars had an increased understanding of soft power and could differentiate what is and what is not a soft power.

In light of ongoing global conflicts and tensions, effective communication is key to make peaceful dialogues. To prepare the KASSID scholars for the future challenging context, the KAS provided the scholars with a communication training. On 7 December, the communication trainers, Ms. Warisara Meepasanee and Ms. Phornpen Wongkitmanochai, used both - theory and practice - to achieve effective communication based on empathy. The scholars gained deep listening and conceptualizing skills by noticing verbal and body language. Moreover, they learned how to turn judgment into empathy, and how to understand and express their own feelings and needs through a card game. Besides, they got to understand their own personalities, seeing pros and cons of their characters. They learned about what kind of communication method they use, and what type of communication they prefer most. The trainers let the scholars play a drawing game by dividing duties of each scholars. Another game was a role play where the scholars had to understand the situation and analyze the character of their conversation partner in order to create an effective dialogue to reach their goal. At the end of the session, the KASSID scholars reflected that apart from getting to know themselves better and communication technics, they have learned how to work as a team, to plan the work process, to accept differences of each character, and most importantly to trust their co-worker. The KASSID Winter Meeting 2022 ended with joy and happiness of all participants. We are looking forward to the next meeting in Summer 2023!