Marta Podniece: It's Up to Me Indeed: Bits from the Training for Trainers 'It's Up to Me 3'

This is a story about an inspiring 7-day learning-by-doing experience that happened in a picturesque little village Diepenau, in considerably Northern part of Germany in the beginning of March 2016. I'm speaking about a training course for trainers 'It's Up to Me 3' that gathered 35 young and energetic participants from 7 countries, namely from Norway, Italy, Macedonia, Spain, Latvia, the Netherlands and Germany willing to become inspiring trainers and learn new things about trainer's realities, exchange ideas and passions, form new friendships and obtain new contacts, as well get to know committed organisations and individuals that could become their partners in developing and implementing future projects, and also learn new things about different cultures. Moreover, the cultural diversity represented in the training course was beyond the 7 countries that officially took part in this training course - as such the colorful support team consisted of individuals coming from Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, two shadow-trainers coming from Croatia and Estonia and even more colorful team of trainers coming from Romania, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and even the U.S.

Train trip, Minden Train Station and Free Hugs!

My pretty cloudy travel day started in Nijmegen, however when I reached Hengelo, where I had to catch the international train going to Berlin through Minden, the sun suddenly was out shining bright and promising a more inspiring continuation of the day, at the same time warming the faces and hearts of all the random by-passers collectively craving for spring to finally arrive (including me). I got on the train to Minden where I also found another Dutch team member Thomas. Since then the travelling time did not seem as long as we already started actively exchanging ideas, projects and life experiences. However, on the last bit of the trip the train was delayed because of some accident on the railway on the way to Hannover. As it turned out for that same reason many trains were delayed. Nonetheless, our international group slowly gathered together in Minden train station and each new arrival was greeted with free hugs from Brane from support staff (that ice, if it existed, broke just right there). After some time of waiting for delayed trains to finally arrive (with participants), we took off to the venue of the training, where we were greeted with more hugs and hot wine - a typical German Christmas drink. The intercultural learning started already there... and continued for the whole week with more pleasant surprises about the cultures that were represented in this colorful group of participants, trainers, shadow-trainers and support staff.

Learning in Action... Exploring Different Styles of Trainers

One of the things that we learned during this training was the different styles of trainers through participation in actual workshops performed and/or team tasks supervised by four different trainers. It actually works when you see completely opposite approaches in action: you can observe the way the workshops are lead and what kind of qualities each trainer aims to bring out and foster in their group of learners. For example, Jim as a trainer brought out an image of a strong and at the same time very sensitive leader through his emotional self-defense workshops from which I learned that it is okay to be emotionally vulnerable, without denying that it is a very human part of who you are. Similarly, Amalia as a trainer through various spiritual exercises reminded us about acceptance of oneself and of the others and about flourishing the good qualities within each person. On the contrary, Nedžko as a trainer brought a great stimulation for determination and the importance of reaching the goal, sometimes stressing too much about making the work process as efficient as possible and in the given time frame. I probably noticed that very clearly since I could very much relate it to myself. Darko as a trainer and the main organizer of this event was a great example of how all kind of issues can be solved in a calm and straight-forward problem-solving manner, even if that means going to the backyard of the neighbouring house to illegally connect to the Internet if some immediate task requires doing so.

Exploring Different Realities of Trainer's Work: Team Work is Everything!

My main conclusion about trainer's job is that it is all about a successful team work. The team work is like an experiment - where a group of people comes together to perform a task they were given and whether the experiment is going to be successful or a complete failure depends on the ways different personalities match together, on individual goals and fields of expertise of each team member and the effort the team puts to make it work. Either way - you either succeed or you learn and this training course was a great playground for finding that out on different occasions. Throughout the whole training course we had a continuous exploration of how different teams can work together to perform the given task as good as possible - starting already from the planning of the national evenings before the training course took place and continuing on different theme-related tasks during the training course. For example, a great example of team work was preparation of arguments for a debate. We as a team in 10 minute time frame collectively came up with viable arguments for or against the issue and delegated each argument to the team member that felt most competent to speak about it. Another great example of team work for me was creating visual aids performance. Since our big group divided further itself in two during our brainstorm session on global issues, I ended up clicking strongly with Miljana from Macedonia about international trade agreements and Māris from Latvia joined our team and became the main star of the audience-involving flashmob, that was followed by an interactive presentation on trade agreements afterwards that we performed in front of other groups. Our team was rather small but the team work turned out to be very effective since we had a clear goal what we are going to do and clear role of each team member and a lot of preparation work which ended up helping each other because we all were so much into making this activity a success and the time was running out too. Speaking of other global issues that were performed - the second group prepared a theatrical performance on decriminalization of marijuana with a public discussion that followed afterwards. An exciting performance was given also by another group that made us think about stereotypes we have about other nations presented through an imaginary EU delegations meeting, which all started (as the performers told us after) by simply being sarcastic about their own national traits and behaviour in an international setting.

There were also a lot of other challenging occasions where we had to show our best abilities of working in different multi-cultural (and also national) teams and be as flexible and as adaptive as possible e.g. during World Cafe in developing and contributing to development of project ideas of other people or creating and performing the final workshop. My team performed the final workshop of 45 minutes about creative writing for other participants as learners and proved that no matter what 'the show must go on' showing a strong commitment to achieve the previously set goal and using different know-how tools and techniques for achieving that goal. Other teams prepared and performed final workshops about leadership, time management, goal-setting, reflection activities and many other (in total 8 teams performed their final workshops). During the training course we also had an opportunity to perform individual tasks - like preparing a speech on a random topic and presenting it to others during the public speaking session and accordingly provide feedback to and receive feedback from fellow-learners on features that should be improved to make better public performances in the future. It also turns out it is much harder to speak about a topic you can't anyhow relate to yourself, though it's a relative drawback as some of our public speakers really outperformed themselves. The feedback was also provided after team performances, similarly group and individual reflection sessions took place helping us to ultimately understand what we have learned and to become even more successful trainers and team players in the future.

Intercultural Learning... Leveled Up!

National Dinners and National Evenings is a separate exciting story that needs to be told! First of all, I must confess that I will certainly borrow this idea of planning and preparing national dinner by each national delegation in my future activities as a trainer of international youth events. There are several reasons for that - firstly, it makes you proud to cook and present something that is typical in your country, secondly - other people learn more about your country and food due to simple curiosity of what's on their plate and how it is served and what it is made of and most importantly how, thirdly, you can better memorize the intercultural experiences by fully engaging yourself into one, fourthly, you can learn a lot about team work from the communication between your own national team members while planning this event, and finally, it's a challenge worth pursuing. Since we had a very competitive group of participants (also according to observations of the facilitators of the training), the competitiveness and surprising moments of one's creativity were also a great part of the national dinners and evenings - we had a chance to try an amazing cauliflower soup from Norway (cauliflower is the most cultivated vegetable in Norway as it turns out), Dutch vanilla-chocolate-chip cookie ice-cream with stroopwafel, Macedonian moussaka and salty-cheese cake with ajvar, Spanish omelette and gazpacho and be completely blown away by Latvian 'family dinner' [a sort of imitation of a peasant family dinner at least some 150 years ago] and by Italian blind-folded and rather sensitive dinner with dancing and enjoyment of food with all other senses except seeing, topping it up with German punctuality and great tasting Spätzle.

We also got to know that cheese slicer comes from Norway, that there are around 19 million bicycles in the Netherlands (and population of 16 million people), that Latvia is a land that sings and that the microphones Lady Gaga uses are produced there, that if Spain did not know how to party already in Napoleon's era then today it would be called La France, that Italy has also a fashion city for men and it is Florence, that Macedonia has a rich cultural heritage - there used to be 365 churches in Ohrid alone, that German SS uniforms were designed by Hugo Boss and much more through interactive presentations, performances and quizzes performed by national delegations.

Another thing that I was amazed of was getting a live confirmation of European realities nowadays regarding free movement and being a part of multi-cultural societies that was also present in this training course, which is beautiful and it added an extra flavour of cultures to this event, so that we had a chance to learn more about Slovakia from Elena representing Norway, about Romania from Ina representing Spain, about Albania from Ornela representing Italy, about Turkey from Ayhan representing Germany, about Ukraine from Oksana representing the Netherlands. Some of us, like me and Carlotta even had a double pleasure to be part of the preparation team of two national dinners and evenings, as both were represented during this training course.

4 Hours of Minden...

Beside the very intense training program we also had a chance to explore the small city nearby the venue of the training course - Minden. It was a peaceful and a bit chilly yet sunny Sunday afternoon, during which the participants naturally split in smaller groups and became 'occasional' tourists, and took up an unofficial challenge of obtaining the ultimate picture of the city while enjoying all the architectural masterpieces of the past and elements of modern day expressions (like street art), making photographic evidences of them or making group photos in front of them without being distracted by shopping facilities, since this option was neither available nor necessary (to my mind) today. We got lucky with Dins from Latvia to have Miriam from Germany on our team of random city explorers since she had been here before and knew all the great things we must see. After the semi-guided walk, our trio like many others settled for having a coffee on a cozy outside terrace and we ended up playing Latvian card game 'Duraks'. To our (mine and Dins') great surprise Miriam knew the game very well and played it very passionately - another score in the overall intercultural learning experience!

What's Next?

It's already April and the learning journey we started in Diepenau continues today on many different levels. Some of us are developing further the project ideas that were initiated during the training course and are organizing work around the new international initiatives, doing everything that is necessary and possible to apply with ready projects for the next Erasmus+ deadline at the end of April. Some of us are developing our own projects and using the opportunity to strengthen our partnerships with the energetic and inspiring people we met during this training course. Some of us are already pursuing trainer's careers more persistently through preparation and performance of new workshops for our organizations back home or more globally. Some of us are borrowing the good examples of workshops we evidenced during the training course and implementing them in our own trainer's performances (sharing is caring, right?). Some of us are using the mentorship opportunity and getting advices on how to proceed with our trainer's careers and so on. The motion has started and the wind is blowing in the right direction, so let's hope this big boat of great promise gets to the new shores of multi-dimensional development and more opportunities for more young people!

Sunday, 10 April 2016

It's Up to Me Indeed: Bits from the Training for Trainers 'It's Up to Me 3'

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