This morning the group came together for to connect ahead of the programme week. MarCus welcomed the participants, gave a short introduction and introduced members of the seminar team who will be facilitating, documenting and supporting with technical requirements.

Yuliya then shared the three objectives for the seminar which are…

• Strengthening the capacities of trainers
• Deal with bias and failures
• Inspiration from the business and psychology world

The format and timings of the programme for the week were then introduced including times for the expert inputs, failure conference and the Guild’s Annual General Meeting.

Step into the circle if

To get familiar with each others names and learn a little about each other the participants formed a circle and were asked a series of questions. When they answered yes to any of the questions they took a step forward into the circle and said their name and gave a short piece of information about why they had answered yes.

The questions included things such as ‘who has delivered two trainings this year?’, ‘who is from Ireland?’, ‘who is a member of the Guild?’ and ‘who think their country makes the best coffee?’. The activity helped the participants learn more about one another and, importantly, get to know everyone’s names.

Forming a supporting network

Buzz led the group with an activity to map the connections between the participants in the room. The participants were given a length of rope and had to connect every person in the room using it based on the connections that they have with each other.

As more connections were made the rope created a web across the room between the participants. At the end of the activity Buzz explained that one of the purposes of the Guild is to create a network which can support trainers – and as you can see, the participants had done just that.

Preparing for departure

Next Buzz invited the participants to prepare to depart onto their Youth Trainers Reboot journey. This activity took on the style of an security check at the airport as prepared for the programme. First participants were invited to free themselves of things they don’t need during the programme, negative feelings etc etc etc were all to be thrown in the bin and let go of.

They were also asked to complete their Youth Trainers Reboot boarding pass with the destination they wanted to travel to – the outcomes and impact that they wanted to have by the end of the week.

Then the participants had to place their essentials for the week in a clear plastic bag, these were the vital items that would be needed to ensure that the seminar was successful for everyone. Finally, the participants packed their luggage with the right attitudes and behaviours that would be needed to get the best results from the week.

Check back this evening for the next instalment of the Youth Trainers Reboot blog.