ORGANISATION: CEPS
ACTIVITY 11
ERASMUS + FATI PROJECT
What?
Team work and collaboration
Educational use
Group learning activity.
Benefits/advantages:
The idea is to put people in groups with other people they don’t know and make them work together so as to develop ideas and strategies collectively destined for one purpose (make the egg fly and prevent it from breaking once it lands on the ground). It will develop teamwork and collaboration strategies, create bonds between people who don’t know each other and increase the level of trust between them. It will also give them a sense of interdependence: understand that we are much more resourceful together than when on one’s own, while recognizing one’s own value to the group.
Limits: location needs to allow for the egg to fall from the window with some security as to the case when it breaks.
How to use it?
Goal is that the egg experiences a free fall from at least 3 floors high and lands safe and sound.
We divide people in groups, present the problem and the material and let them think of a possible solution, on what they can create with a restricted amount of material to keep the egg safe during the fall and the impact. They will have approximately half an hour to build the construction they came up with and after they will test it all together, while making observations.
Afterwards, we will have a set of questions to ask the participants.
Duration: one hour
Participants: youth trainers, social workers and educators, vulnerable groups and populations.
Materials:
- 1 m cord
- 2 balloons
- 2 sheets of paper
- 2 sheets of carton
- 2 raw eggs
- 1 scissor
- 1 m duct tape
The material can vary – important is, that it is restricted.
Procedure:
The main goal is that the egg experiences a free fall from at least 3 floors high and lands safely on the ground.
Step 1: divide the participants in groups of 3 or 4 people and present them with the material that they will find available to them. Explain that there is only a limited amount of time to come up with the idea and to build it after.
Step 2: try to build your egg-flying machine with the material you are presented with
Step 3: try out your inventions! Do they work? Observe what everyone has built and have fun!
Step 4: after the flying-contest the groups can answer (some of) these questions:
- How did you work together as a group?
- How were the decisions made?
- How do you deal with success / failure?
- How do you deal with risk / pressure?
- Do you believe to be creative?
- How do you relate this experience to life situations?
- Did the exercise help you know each other and in what way?
Resources & availability:
ACTIVITY 12
ERASMUS + FATI PROJECT
What?
Finding your best self, developing self-esteem and reflect about each individual’s strength.
Educational use
Group training activity
Benefits/advantages:
To increase optimism, the person’s mood and well being, to empower refugees and migrants and to help them reflect about their strengths and weaknesses. This exercise will help them envision the power they have within that can allow them to change current states and situations they are in and it can be used to increase optimism in terms of expecting favorable outcomes.
Furthermore, this exercise will help them develop self-esteem, creativity and they will get better knowledge about themselves and the other participants and their desires and strengths.
How to use it?
Follow the step by step process.
Duration: 1 hour
Participants: youth trainers, social workers and educators, vulnerable groups and populations (mixed group). 10-15 people.
Materials: Papers, pens, color pencils and a flipchart.
Procedure:
While in most cases the exercise is used in a written form, it is also possible to ask the participants to make drawings of the way they envision their best possible self. They can also use the visualization on a daily basis to improve their self-esteem.
Step 1: set a timer or stopwatch for 15 minutes, during this time the participants need to think about their best possible future self and to write it down (or draw) on a piece of paper. They can imagine how the life they always wanted would be, the skills and abilities they would like to have, which characteristics of themselves would they want to let go of. While writing, the participants should not be worried about grammar or punctuation, but instead focus on writing all their thoughts and emotions in an expressive way.
Step 2: reflection. After completing the initial exercise, the participants should reflect on their feelings and answer some questions that the trainers will have prepared. What effects did this exercise have?
• Does this exercise affect you more emotionally or does it affect your current self-image?
• Did it motivate or inspire you?
• Does it make you want to make changes?
• How did this exercise affect you overall?
Resources & availability:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-matters-most/201303/what-is-your-best-possible-self
ACTIVITY 13
ERASMUS + FATI PROJECT
What?
Learning about different cultures, celebrating uniqueness, improving self-esteem that is defined by our cultural background.
Educational use
Group learning activity
Benefits/advantages:
The benefit of this exercise is to improve the knowledge the participants have about one another and about each other’s culture. It is a bonding exercise, as well as a tool to discover more about themselves and their identity and cultural background.
It also important to celebrate everyone’s diversity and respect differences while building self-esteem. There have been different studies that prove how cultural differences can define our self-esteem and how, regardless of our personal values, we base most of our self-esteem on the fulfillment of the dominant values of our culture:
How to use it?
Follow the step by step process.
Duration: 1 hour
Participants: youth trainers, social workers and educators, vulnerable groups and populations (mixed group). No more than 10 participants.
Materials: pen, papers, colored pencils, markers, flip chart.
Procedure:
The participants will have to come up with something that they love about themselves and present it to the rest of the group, but the things that they are allow to present are limited to their culture and background. It can be a specific place that they love, a dance or a song, they could read a poem that means something to them, or draw o picture or a symbol that they think could be interesting for others to learn. They will afterwards explain why this means a lot to them.
Step 1: the trainer explains the rule to the partecipants and leaves them time to come up with an idea that they want to present to the rest of the group.
Step 2: the presentation. Each participant can either draw, write or put on music for others to see/hear. After he/she will explain the meaning behind it.
For example: they can draw a dish that they love or a symbol and explain the meaning
Step 3: everyone sits together in a circle and discuss what they have seen. The trainers can ask quesitons to lead the conversation:
- Did a specific drawing/symbol/song reminded you of something specific to your culture/country?
- Can you find some similarities?
- Was it easy to understand? Can songs and art connect us on a deeper level no matter the understanding of it?
- What do you feel is special/different about your culture?
Let the participants notice how all of the drawings and papers are different, how we are all unique.
Resources & availability:
https://psychcentral.com/news/2007/06/07/self-esteem-comparable-across-cultures/881.html
ACTIVITY 14
ERASMUS + FATI PROJECT
What?
Knowledge of the self and knowledge of the other, self-awareness.
Educational use
Group learning activity.
“Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: ‘What does his voice sound like?’ ‘What games does he like best?’ ‘Does he collect butterflies?’ They ask: ‘How old is he?’ ‘How many brothers does he have?’ ‘How much does he weigh?’ ‘How much money does he have?’ Only then do they think they know him”. (Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince)
This exercise will help address one’s own personality and the personality of the other through a series of questions (the Proust questionnaire) that help reveal deep personal traits. Usually, when one wants to know some person they will ask them questions such as ‘what do you do in life?’, ‘where are you from?’, ‘what is your parent’s occupation?’, but what does really matter when it comes to really know a person? By answering those questions, people will rediscover themselves and the others through the sharing of feelings, memory, affinities, etc. and will go beyond made-up ideas of people based on what they look like, who they say to be, etc. Moreover, knowing one’s deep self, helps being more compassionate to oneself and toward the others.
How to use it?
Proust questionnaire asks questions such as ‘what is your idea of happiness?’, ‘what do you most value in your friends?’, ‘how would you like to die?’ and lets. The only thing to do is to think of those questions that one seldom asks oneself and rediscover who you are. It also helps know each other deeply.
Duration: 1h-1.30h
Participants: mixed group, between 10 and 15 people
Materials: Proust questionnaires, pens
Procedure:
The facilitator presents the Proust questionnaire and passes the forms out to people
- The participants have 30min to answer all questions
- The facilitator starts to read each question and asks participants to respond to them one by one. The facilitator can do the exercise too. People can comment on every one’s response.
- Once finished, the participants are invited to find similar questions to ask to the group that they feel would help them know people deeper. They can ask those questions to the persons sitting at their right and left sides.
- The facilitator closes the session with a discussion. He/She can ask them questions on how they felt responding to such questions, whether they felt uncomfortable or at ease, what they think of such approach to know people, whether it revealed them things about themselves they didn’t think of, etc.
Resources & availability:
ACTIVITY 15
ERASMUS + FATI PROJECT
What?
Beyond cultural boundaries, an exercise to increase empathy for people experiencing the loss of connection to home landscapes
Educational use
Group learning activity.
Benefits/advantages: it allows them to share elements of their identity which can bring feelings of pride and nostalgia and at the same time understand that the others feel the same regarding their own culture. It leads the participants to understand that beyond cultural differences and sometimes barriers, we are all the same when it comes to feel pain, joy, pride, etc.
This exercise aims to foster greater awareness of landscape as a form of relationship, to explore the many possible personal and cultural impacts of disruption of this same relationships and to consider ways to heal or form it forming new relationships and bonds with unfamiliar and new landscapes and environments. Some specific goal that we identified:
- To raise new questions about the relationship between individuals, communities, and land
- To increase understanding and empathy for peoples experiencing the loss of connection to home landscapes
- To build skills for personal resilience in the face of future changes. To develop self-empowerment in each individual.
How to use it?
Follow the step by step process.
Duration: 1h-1.30h
Participants: mixed group. 10-15 people.
Materials: Paper and pencils.
Procedure:
Step 1: participants reflect individually on their experiences in unfamiliar landscapes and how they might feel were they to move away from a home landscape.
Step 2: having considered these questions on a personal level, they envision possible ways of building connection with new or unfamiliar landscapes.
Step 3: participants are asked to read their reflections and answers. They can also be presented with case studies of human movement and their consequences (historical or current).
Step 4: finally, participants are to reflect on new questions that arose as they considered case studies after thinking about migration or displacement at a personal level.
This process is designed to:
- build personal resilience in the face of future changes
- enhance understanding and build empathy when feeling displaced
- consider the role of migration
Optional: the trainer can open a discussion and asks them if they liked the activity, how it made them feel, what they learned, whether it offered them another perspective on cultures different from theirs, etc.
Resources & availability:
https://serc.carleton.edu/bioregion/examples/65892.html
https://lesley.edu/article/the-psychology-of-emotional-and-cognitive-empathy