Implementation Day 8

Day 8 – Thursday 26 February

Written by the Lithuanian team 🇱🇹

The morning started with a shift in roles. After a week of training, participants were given tips and tricks on how most activities are set up. As usual, these usually include:

1 - an energizer, 10 to 15 minutes at most, to wake participants up, and energizers are often unrelated to the main activity

2 - the setup, participants are asked a few simple questions to understand basics of the activity

3 - the activity itself, and tips and tricks to ensure that activities flow smoothly

4 - the debriefing, and often the ah-ha moment, where many participants understand the entire point of the activity.

Other tips included delegating roles, such as a facilitator managing the materials, another for the speaking part, a timekeeper, a photographer, and often a separate person taking care of debriefing. With these tips and tricks, in mixed groups, participants worked to create their very own activities. This "Step into the Facilitator's Shoes" session was a real test of our teamwork and how much we had learned about the youth worker competencies.

Below, you can find a summary of each activity done by participants, but just as importantly a document created by each group about step by step for doing the activity.

Team 1 - Communication through drawing: This team set up a task focused on the difficulty of sharing a vision. In pairs, one person had to describe a specific item from a certain topic, yet they had to be vague and indirect. The other person had to draw based only on those instructions. It was a funny but eye-opening way to see how easily communication breaks down and how much we rely on our own assumptions. In the end, we reflected on how to be clearer and more patient when explaining complex ideas to a group.

Team 2 - This group invited us to look inward with a reflective drawing task. We split our papers into two sides: one for things that remind us of home and our roots, and the other for our current life and feelings here in the project. It was a very mindful moment that allowed us to bridge the gap between where we came from and who we are becoming during this training.

Team 3 - Taking the activity outside, this team focused entirely on mental health. They read out different questions and statements meaning, if you connected with the statement or had experienced that situation, you took a step forward. It was a powerful visual representation of our differences and, more importantly, our shared struggles. This activity highlighted why mental health awareness is so vital in our work.

Team 4 - This was a high-energy trust exercise using tape on the floor to create "roads." We were matched in pairs by colors and had to navigate from one side of the highway to our specific color on the other. The catch was that one partner was blindfolded and the other had to give precise commands to get them through the "traffic." Not everyone could be guided at the same time, and this was based on what colors of markers one of the facilitators were holding. It required a lot of focus and showed how much responsibility a leader carries for the safety of their team.

After all the groups finished, experts Bobbie and Erma gave advice on what worked, what didn't and tips and tricks to make activities more effective. We were all quite happy to see the project from the facilitators' perspective and realize that we have the skills to manage a group of young people ourselves.