Dear participants,
This was our first day of the Seminar! We are all amazed with all the participants and the great number of ideas, expectations and contribution that we could learn today! And it's just the beggining!!!
As we agreed, this entry will be for the Blogger of the day to summarize what we've done during our meeting and to give us some feedback and reflections. It'll be open to everyone that want to share whatever related to this great experience.
Enjoy the Seminar and enjoy Madrid!
Today it was a great start up! Thank you all for the welcoming and for the challenges of our first day! The exercise of staring to someone was new technique for me and it wasn't an easy one. It's not easy to observe and put up in words what we think our colleague might be (in my case the young nice Eleonora from Verona- Italy). The week objectives, expectations, and our intentions/contributes are really high and make the challenge even more daring! But I think we have a group that can believe and make a difference!
ResponderEliminarBienvenidos a Madrid
ResponderEliminarAs “blogger of the day” I am supposed to write something about the day. Being the first blogger of the day is a true challenge. I don’t know what is expected and if I can provide any valuable content on this post. I will try my best though.
I would like to reflect today’s exercises on my experiences in my own field. Before I can do that I will explain what it is that I do.
My social/cultural journey started about two years ago. I was asked to get involved into an empowerment-training called “Powerday”. This training is all about getting to know yourself, searching for your own strength and reflecting that on others to see what you can improve in your community, class or school. The training gets it’s power because of the perfect flow of the exercises throughout the day. This training is usually held for youth and young adults between the age of 15 to 25.
What makes this training so special is that it is a really intense one-day training where a group gets to know each other in a way that will never be possible in just a normal day of school. The participants really get to know each other as a person and learn something about the reasons why certain participants react the way they do. In a way we let them get to know themselves by getting to know each other.
“I am, because we are.”
- Ubuntu
In a world full of aiming for the best, it is easy to forget about your concrete goals. When you don’t have a goal, you will never use your own full potential as a human being. That is something that we really want the participants to realise. We want them to be aware of their own power, skills, talents and goals so they can decide for their selves how to put that to good use in the group.
When I arrived in Madrid I did not know what to expect of the training itself. I did not know what the participants were like. How would we be able to mix all those mixed backgrounds into one big melting pot and create something amazing out of that? I did not know any of that. Right now I do.
We had the exercise where we had to analyse a participant just at the way they look. An exercise where you’re pre-judgemental behaviour is asked. For me it was really hard to let my mind go that way. Pre-judgement is wrong. And for heaven’s sake, I’m working at a organisation that wants to get rid of pre-judgement in the world.
The kind of pre-judgement I had today is different. This was valuable pre-judgement. This was sincere curiosity towards the other person. To the person itself. It is so easy to judge someone and end up with a whole bunch of negative things they “probably contain”. But that’s all because we’ve been living that way. Negative thoughts, feelings and actions are dominant. I was amazed to see that there were such good outcomes on this exercise.
Of course I speak from my own point of view and the way our culture works in The Netherlands. I’d really like to see what pre-judgement is in other countries. Please react on this blog and share your culture’s point of view on pre-judgement being negative or not.
I think today we made a great step by getting to know each other and getting to see what expectations we have. I feel that this is going to be a great week with some surprising content. For me, this week is all about sharing experiences, theory and understanding the different ways of leading groups.
Thank you all for this opportunity.
Thank you so much, dear Blogger, for this wonderful contribution! I'm sure you can tell us more about the Ubuntu way of living! :)
ResponderEliminar