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PILOT TEAM BUILDING WORKSHOP FOR SENIOR VOLUNTEERS Budapest, 20th April2015, led by Borbála Hadrévy

Follow up – local pilot activity What: Local pilot workshop When: 20th April 2015 How: based on the experiences, approach gained during the training course Where: The pilot workshop took place at Európa Pont, 1024Budapest, Lövőház u. 35. in the organisation of National Volunteer Centre

Name and contact of the person/oragnisation doing it Hadre vy Borba la Cecí lia, Ö nke ntes Ko zpont Alapí tva ny (Ö KA) /National Volunteer Centre/ hadrevy.borbala@onkentes.hu, www.onkentes.hu

Target group The target group is about 40-50 senior volunteers (55+) regularly meeting in the frame of a senior volunteer club. All of them are active in different areas of volunteering, their experiences, difficulties and successes are the main topics of the club. ÖKA has implemented a Grundtvig senior exchange program and as a result of the project a group of enthusiastic senior set up the club mainly for promotion of senior volunteering. Since the beginnings there are 40-50 members with a constantly growing number. Once a month they meet to exchange experiences and discuss future possibilities. The participation was voluntary but all the seniors who were present took part. In the frame of the workshop 19 senior volunteers had the chance to build their community.

Aim of the activity Volunteers being helpers of others are open to new experiences. However it is still difficult to carve out a new path at civil or governmental organisations that have not had volunteers before. Out senior volunteers from the club are pioneers in this sense. Sometimes they can get

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discouraged by the obstacles that appear when they offer their pure helping intentions. Therefore it is very important to keep their motivation, give them open space to express their disappointments, give them positive feedback and offer them a group of people with similar interests to be connected to. Not only ÖKA but many other civil organisations have enjoyed the services of these volunteers. Therefore ÖKA wants to give back something to them, a bit like incentive program. This is why I started a series of workshops with the aim of building stronger connections, building trust, enhancing the sense of belonging, building a real community and to get to know better each other.

Description of the activity The first workshop was a pilot section in order to find out the approach and attitude of the senior volunteers towards a teambuilding workshop with adaptive structure. As learn from IKTE I was defining the main aims and rather open to the group trying to really sensitively react to their actual needs. Before the workshop took place there was one hour time to discuss regular topics of the club. The mood of the volunteers went a bit low as they were complaining about the negative reactions of organisations where they offered their help. Therefore I had to start to work from there. As there were some new members we started with learning the names games showing gestures. First some of the seniors felt uncomfortable but later they really started to enjoy that they could move and express themselves also with a gesture or movement. By the end of the rounds the atmosphere got very cheerful. They really enjoyed human not, with closed eyes finding other hands then untie the group. There was one person who was not closing her eyes, later explained that she has a kind of balancing problem. The group was ÖK with it and open to every alteration. The core of the workshop was connected to volunteering, in small groups they had to plan a perfect day for a vulnerable group or person. According to the feedbacks and the evaluation forms they enjoyed this exercise the most. They had to present the perfect day to the other groups. Here more time would have been needed to receive reflections and inspirations from other group members but we had only limited time because of the venue. At the end of the workshop we stood in a circle and one by one we had to give 1-2 concepts, ideas what does this club mean to you. We were throwing yarn to each other which formed a net at the end symbolising the connections of the group. Finally participants had to fill in an evaluation form.

Results The outcomes are very positive. At the end of the workshop we circulated an evaluation form in order to find out the positive and negative aspects of the workshop. In most cases the negative was that time was too short and that they would have gone more into detailed discussion when presenting the perfect day. Positive feedbacks were that they enjoyed themselves and found it really

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Pros and contras concerning the used methodology

The methodology has to be aligned with the target group. Some groups are sensitive to structure to be presented in advance. I was very surprised about my group that they were satisfied with the information given in advance which was really only about the aim of the workshop. It is a question of how it is communicated and of course also the personality of the trainer matters as well. They trusted me therefore they were open to try anything new. Also it was useful that some participants have known each other for longer time – this made them feel more comfortable, when embarrassed they made jokes and laughed instead of being shy. With this target group for this one pilot workshop the methodology was perfect.

Recommendations on the methodology As mentioned before the lack of previously elaborated structure and a concrete list of exercises and timeframes has to be very thoroughly planned according to various factors such as the age of the target group, whether the participants know each other, aim of the training, etc. If I choose this method to work with I will communicate its features before the start of the training.

Personal and professional reflections are encouraged to be described in the report:

How did the training in Hungary support/challenged/altered my professional approach? It definitely gave me more confidence as a trainer after having the chance to lead a workshop and getting feedback from the participants and trainers in Cserekeszo lo . Also it gave me a great inspiration and intention to want to share all the experiences that I gained during the one week training. I have many plans for the future in personal and in professional life to work with, to experiment with different target groups.

What did I get from the training that I can use in my work based on the pilot activity? I got mostly a different attitude, a kind of approach focusing on the participants and building up my training or workshop based upon their actual needs and status. I also got concrete exercises that I tried out – for example the introduction.

What is not fitting my work from the training based on the pilot activity? More time and more experience is needed to be able to answer this question.

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Copyright Recipients are free to use all or parts of this document for personal use however are requested to inform the author. Recipients are requested to acknowledge The artist within – Applied eMOTION consortium and the author in any reference to the content of this document. In the event of any further queries please consult the author. Acknowledgements This project was possible with the financial support from the Erasmus+ program. The methodological resources and inspiration came from the The artist within – Applied eMOTION long-term adult education project (www.theartistwithin.eu). The generosity from the fund and these organisations is much appreciated.