Contributed by Jinil Fleischman
Introducing CARP North Lake’s newest program: The Wave. Every two weeks, CARP members and friends gather together for an evening of fun, family, and deep activities. With just three Wave’s finished, the program has achieved success and has a promising future.
Woojin Suina has been the CARP president at North Lake College since Fall of 2017, and while he always enjoyed CARP meetings, he felt like there was something missing. Even though CARP is all about the study and application of principles, he felt that they’d been doing a lot of studying but not enough applying. He wanted to create an environment where students could feel the power and love that results when we apply the Unification Principle to our lives.
CARP North Lake President Woojin Suina presents ‘Thought Trends’ from the recent CARP curriculum.
Besides that, Woojin had one more frustration. While CARP was great for all the students at North Lake College, he had many friends in the Dallas region who go to other schools or aren’t in school who hadn’t experienced the CARP culture. He wanted to find a way to share that culture with them. It was apparent that a new program was needed to fulfill these various needs of CARP North Lake and its leaders and members.
This summer brought some changes to the CARP North Lake team. Some students had attended the CARP HyoJeong Trip this past summer and wanted to step up as local leaders. Several other students wanted to become CARP leaders after completing leadership training through the Generation Peace Academy gap year program.
The new CARP North Lake team asked themselves one question, “What would we like to experience in CARP?” From there, they set to work on a new program: The Wave. The Wave is a program that is hosted every other week where CARP students and friends can experience the principles of CARP.
The program opens with an icebreaker, followed by a short summary of the biweekly topic. After this comes the main event of the night: an experiential activity that demonstrates the theme of the talk. After that, participants reflect on their experience of the activity, and finally close with a reflection and discussion about how those principles could be applied and connected to life.
The first Wave on September 26th.
They had their first WAVE on September 26th with the topic, Worldview, based on the national Principled Curriculum which debuted in September. The activity was a debate that demonstrated the necessity of being open-minded. It was a smash hit!
Wave number two!
This was followed by the second Wave, on the topic of Thought Trends. The activity of that night was called Trick o Bowl, a Telephone-like game that shows how ideas change and warp over time. It was a very powerful activity! One participant was so moved by the activity, she now wants to establish CARP on her campus. Another CARP member said he had never seen his friend as happy as he was during the Wave.
North Lake’s on-campus meeting post-Wave.
Based on the success of the Wave, this activity-based learning was expanded to the weekly CARP meetings on North Lake campus. One very successful activity on campus was Trinity Ball, where students experienced the frustration of trying to play ball with others who have different rules than you. This demonstrated the need to understand others’ worldviews — or the “rules” that they play by. It also demonstrated the need for the values CARP stands for: interdependence, mutual prosperity, and universally shared values.
‘Trinity Ball’ was an activity played on campus to better understand the values of interdependence, mutual prosperity, and universally shared values.
When asked about his experience so far this semester, Woojin shared that, most of all, he is incredibly proud of his team:
“I’m so proud of how much effort they are giving for all of the events. Without them, this wouldn’t have happened.”
He says that he enjoys the time they spend together as a team because there is such a strong sense of unity.
When asked about the future for CARP North Lake, Woojin shares that he hopes people can feel inspired by the vision of CARP. He hopes that they can experience true vulnerability and taste a culture of heart that they haven’t experienced before, a culture of feeling like true brothers and sisters.
Follow more about CARP North Lake on their Instagram page. Share your story to jennifer@carplife.org!