ACT13!
SUPPLEMENTAL LESSON - DEVELOPMENT
Magic Shoes
OVERVIEW
This exercise encouraged students to work together to solve a difficult problem and create a Walk
team to provide relief to Darfuri refugees.
OBJECTIVES
• Students will have to work together to complete a difficult task.
• Students will better understand that in order to make change we have to work together.
• Students will discuss the plinth of the people in Darfur.
MATERIALS
• Something to make 2 lines
• Flip flops or other shoes (optional)
AGENDA
Introduction
ACT13! CURRICULUM
1. Set two boundary lines about four feet apart (this is possible in a classroom, but if space is available
and weather permits, you may want to do this outside). Ask the entire class to stand behind one boundary line, facing the other line. Explain to students that the boundary line they are standing behind is their
village in Darfur, which is under attack by Janjaweed. The boundary line across from them is the refugee
camp in Chad, where they will be safer. In between the boundaries is a long, hot desert, and the only
way to cross it is to have a pair of magic shoes that allow you to cross quickly – but there’s only one pair
of these shoes between all of them. The entire class must get from the village to the refugee camp, with
this one pair of shoes. The entire class needs to make it to the refugee camp, but if anyone touches the
desert without the shoes, the heat will burn them.
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Rules:
• Each person can wear the shoes once, going only one direction - that’s it!
• Shoes can not be tossed back to the other side – though when worn, they can cross miles of desert in
an instant, no one can throw that far.
• Once you have worn the shoes you can not wear them again.
• Both shoes must be worn by the same person (students can’t give one shoe to one person, and one to
another).
Everyone must work as a team to find a solution. Explain to students that this game will be both a physical
challenge and logical problem. Allow 15-25 minutes for students to cross the desert. (Solution requires
determining a method of stockpiling enough people on the “refugee camp” side so that smaller students
can bring the shoes back to those who can carry others. Carrying is necessary!)
Activity
2. Once everyone has crossed the desert, initiate a debrief/discussion. The goal is to help students understand
that while refugee relief may be a temporary solution to a much bigger problem (i.e., it won’t solve the
genocide), it is still very necessary.
• What happened in this exercise? How did you finally succeed?
• What were the challenges?
• Imagine a different scenario. What if you still had to cross that desert, but magic shoes didn’t solve the
distance problem anymore. The shoes still protected you from burning, but you had to travel the
thousands of miles across the desert. How would you get across? What would you do? Could you
carry each other that far?
• Crossing the desert is really only the small problem, and magic shoes are only the temporary solution.
What’s the big problem? What’s forcing you to go across the desert in the first place? (Janjaweed,
genocide, the government of Sudan)
• So magic shoes aren’t going to solve the big problem. They aren’t going to stop the Janjaweed from
attacking; they’re not going to convince the government of Sudan to stop the genocide. But are they
necessary anyway? Why/Why not?
In this exercise, even though the magic shoes aren’t solving the bigger problem, they do keep you alive.
Up until now, we’ve been learning the skills of how to actually stop genocide – to educate our community
and raise awareness, and to advocate for change from people in power. Those are the things that will
actually stop genocide. But those things take a long, long time to have a real affect, unfortunately. And in
the meantime, 4.7 million people are desperately in need of help to stay alive.
ACT13! CURRICULUM
Magic shoes are the least of their concerns – what kind of things do you think refugees need?
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(Food, water, shelter, medicine, are clear answers, but try to get students to think of the less tangible things
people might need after going through the violence they have just endured: psychosocial care, education –
so that they can have a future, farming supplies and other supplies that let them rely on themselves,
economic programs, leadership and conflict resolution training, etc.)
3. To help the refugees stay alive, and stay safe, we need to learn how to raise money to support on the
group development projects. One way this is done is by joining the annual Walk to End Genocide by making
your own team or by joining your Synagogues team.
Suggested questions for class brainstorm:
• Who can we ask to join our team? (parents, siblings, other students outside the classroom)
• How should we ask them? (face to face, through email, using the Walk website, putting up posters, etc)
• Who can we ask to sponsor our team?
• How should we ask them?
ACT13! CURRICULUM
• Let’s set a goal – how many people do we think we can get on our team? How much money do we
think we can raise?
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