What does it mean to be human? What are the common values that we live by, in our daily actions, in Médecins Sans Frontière’s medical work, in fiction?

Médecins Sans Frontières teams will be at the Lëtzebuerg City Bibliothèque to discuss this with Cycle 4 pupils, presenting also our official supporter, Tony Tony Chopper from One Piece. On the 29th of October, this workshop will also be hosted by Dr Javid Abdelmoneim, International President of MSF.

The workshop will be divided in a few key moments, all leading to the same objective: understanding what it means to be human and what solidarity means, how it manifests in different aspects of our lives. First, we will give a brief presentation of MSF, to introduce ourselves and our mission, as well as our philosophy regarding humanity.

Then, we will ask the pupils to participate in a photo language activity “What is humanity?”. We will print a selection of photographs from MSF projects and/or medical projects that young people can relate to and display them throughout the room. The objective will be to invite participants to take a look at all the pictures, and to choose the photo that resonates with them most and explain why it speaks to them, moves them, or feels meaningful, in regard to the theme “What is
humanity?”.

We will move on to a geo guessing game, based on pictures taken in different MSF contexts. At the same time, we will have given pupils a square map, a Pierce projection, that aims to question the size of the countries and the point of view on the Mercator projection, which is most used worldwide at this point. After each country we present, we will give the chance to the pupils to identify the country on a map they are not familiar with.

Finally, we will launch an open discussion centred on the concepts of humanity and solidarity, which students
will have prepared in advance using a worksheet that we will send them after they register. On this worksheet, we will
ask students to define what these concepts mean to them and to share an example of solidarity that they have recently witnessed—whether in their daily lives, in the news, or in a literary or audiovisual work. We will also ask them to choose their favourite character from a book, film, TV series, manga, or other audiovisual work, and explain why that character inspires them. Finally, they will be invited to reflect on whether heroes and heroines influence their own behaviour, and if so, how.
This discussion will be the central component of our workshop: an open conversation between the students and our teams, including Dr. Javid Abdelmoneim. We will use this time to introduce our partnership with One Piece charcter Tony Tony Chopper, official supporter of MSF. We can then reflect on what Chopper represents as a character, the values he embodies, and the shared vision of humanity that both One Piece and MSF uphold through its medical humanitarian
work.