B1. The Top Team of Consultants
Type of Activity:
❑ Mentoring
❑ Peer Mentoring
x Workshop
Relevant pillar: Pillar 7. Knowledge about teenagers’ development, self-determination and autonomy skills
Relevant competence(s):
Transversal Elements
Social & Civic
Learning to Learn
Cultural Awareness & Expression
Sense of Initiative & Entrepreneurship
Duration: 1 hour
Obstacles are a part of life, and often they seem great hinders for personal development particularly to children and youngsters in residential care. Children gain confidence when they learn how to overcome challenges and obstacles, and how to step up and take initiative and engage in activities that are meaningful to them. Nonetheless, especially in contexts of socioeconomic vulnerability and psychosocial risk associated with the status of a child in state care, their immediate communities are recognized as active agents, generating collective strategies, toward more collaborative efforts between people at different levels to respond to their individual problems and needs.
- To support young people to establish purpose, towards developing their self-determination and autonomy skills,
- to promote collective thinking strategies and collaborative efforts towards building positive futures.
For all children when turning 18 but more specifically for children ageing out of care the process of self-determination has a personal and psychology-relevant meaning, especially to these youngsters due to the difficulties they experienced in childhood and teenage years. This process of self-determination affects their ability or process of making one’s own choices and controlling one’s own life.
At the same time, this journey is not happening in a social vacuum. The value of collective strategies and collaborative efforts is missed when focusing exclusively on individual autonomy status. As recent studies show collective self-determination anticipates support for intergroup helping, and well-being, over and above individual-level self-determined motivation.
Logistics: Background: Classroom/ Activities Room.
Materials:
- Paper sheets
- Pens/ pencils
Difficulties, or absence, of work practices that invest in the accepting and strengthening of collective strategies;
Analyze/discuss problems or challenges in life is a natural aspect of everyday life. Developing problem solving as an essential competence, is part of what many adults do in their every day activities and accepting different opinions and advice most of the time complements the envisioned solution; moreover focusing exclusively on individual autonomy status is missing the value of community support and examples
Implementation Steps
Practical exercise: Explains to the CLs that a consultant’s job is to provide expert advice to their “clients”. For this exercise, all the participants are going to act as a highly specialized and competent consulting team. Several problems are brought together to the group. In this exercise, everyone will be in the “consultant team” working in collaboration with the rest of the team.
Identifying Problems and Challenges
Explain the activity:
Get the participants to sit around a table. Give them some time to reflect upon a problem or personal challenge they would like to overcome in their future, but are unsure how, or that they find too difficult, and ask them to write it down and describe it in two or three lines maximum.
Jump into the Consultant’s Shoes
When they’re finished with the description of the problem, instruct them to pass their papers to their left. Allow then one or two minutes to read the problem now in front of them and write a piece of advice or a potential solution beneath it.
After this, pass the papers to the left again and repeat the process. Keep going until participants have their original piece of paper back.
Remember!!!
Encourage the participants’ ability to solve problems quickly and creatively which can make a significant difference to the success of the community connection.
Evaluating the expertise
Talk to your group about the advice they received from their colleagues. Consider asking these questions:
- How do you feel about being called upon to give advice?
- Were you able to offer something constructive to your teammates?
- How do you feel about asking for teammates’ help?
- Were you surprised at the amount and quality of the advice you received?
Observations:
Some of your participants might not have been able to think of a piece of advice, or a possible solution. If they get stuck, ask them to write down a few words of encouragement or support instead.