Day Six - Volunteers

I supposed that the day after intercultural night will be rather quiet and not so hard-working and demanding for us. To my big surprise, there was no concessionary fare for the participants of The Golden Frame training course.  Zora with Giorgi where conducting trainer without any problems and all participants were on time to start a new part of material prepared by them J  

The day started with 2 energizers proposed by Hungarian teamJ
Andy stick a piece of paper to the back of each participant. The aim of the energizer was to guess who we are by asking questions to others. At the beginning I was really afraid, because I have a huge problem to remember actors and singers, but I managed. Thanks to him we could feel at least for a moment a little famous and well-known  persons.

The second energizer was proposed by Zora. We were in the circle making a massage called “pizza” on the back of other person who was in front of us. Zora was the luckiest person in our team because she had a pizza made by half-Italian, half-Czech EVS volunteer Franceso J

The main topic of the day was “Voluntary management”. Zora and Giorgi had shown us a different faces of voluntary management using different, interesting workshops and activities to make us more involved and interested in this issue.

First activity was an activity showing lack of structure in many NGOs or Associations. We were in the circle and we were throwing the balls among us.  Each ball was a different obstacles that we have to face each day in our work. Balls were symbolizing for example a daily activities, lack of structure and unexpected problems. It was a funny and very good activity that helped us to realize how our work look and how many thinks probably we can improve there.

The second activity was proposed by Giorgi. We were divided in small teams of 4-5 persons (greetings to my team – Stella, Tatia, Nina and Gaya J )  where we had an opportunity to discuss, propose and explain other teams our solution that we together invented.

 A few examples of the situation proposed by Giorgi:

1)      You have an EVS volunteer, and its already 1 week that he didn’t show up at the office, and you have no idea what happened. He is not at home, from the organization nobody knows where is he. What to do?

2)      Your volunteer is highly motivated, he/she participates in all of your events. The only thing is that he is asking you thousands of questions all the time what becomes very tiring already. What to do?

To be honest I really liked almost all situations that were described and used in the activity. It was very interesting for me what solutions my friends proposed. Besides, we also described how we solve such kind of problems in our countries or NGOs. Thanks to this activity I understood a little more the reality.

I also liked the idea of voting by using colorful papers – green if we agree with proposed solution and pink (for someone it was red J) when we disagree or we have some suggestion that we want to add.

After tasty lunch & lunch break (Andy, Teodor, Gorge once again thanks for a walk, It was a pleasure to chat and together get hotel’s bearings J ) we started the second part of the session in the other very cozy common room in different building.

But before we had two energizers outsides. First one explained to us Teodor. We were in couples standing in front of the second person from our pair and our task was to raise our hands in the last moment when one participant was running in the tunnel made by others. 

The second one was proposed by irreplaceable Zora (It is not a joke, I am serious in 100% J ). This activity was also in pairs. We were playing stone, paper, seizures game. The aim of this energizer was to win in the couple and to win as a team.

In the second part of the day we were considering the factors that motivates us. We were speaking about motivation and demotivation factors, and we divided them in 5 categories: Ownership, Process, Recognition, Purpose, Achievement. It was really interesting and joyful to hear how others motivate themselves during their work in NGOs (eg. Smiles of others, the perspective of fulfillment when the task is done, holidays, next projects or simply good food and beer).    

The second part of the session in the afternoon was a very good example how our trainers are flexible to fulfill our needs J.  As a team we had chosen 3 most interesting topics that we wanted to discuss. Topics that we considered were about:

1)      How to start with NGO? (Francesco)

2)      Mentor 2 Mentor (Stella and Hajni)

3)      Sharing forms (Elena)

 I participated in 2 workshops prepared by Francesco and Stella and Hajni. To sum up Francesco’s widely knowledge gained in the training course in Berlin that he shared with us the best sentence will be that “NGO is made by persons for persons”. Second workshop regarding mentor’s concept was really interesting. Girls shared with us their experience in Hungary and Greece connected with this topic. I would love to have such lovely mentors as girls during my EVS! J

As I know the workshop prepared by Ellena was also very helpful and useful for the persons that had the opportunity to participate in it. I hope she will share with as ger knowledge by pointing out for example the names of programs that she use to share files with others.

The official part of the training course finished in a wink. Someone went to sleep early as always J , someone had a nice discussion in common room J and  someone else played cards or other games in the canteen downstairs. Another nice day has finished. I can not wait till the beginning of next amazing and interesting day.

Beata