Welcome Extravaganza! Atlas Corps Welcomes Class 8 Fellows
RSVP (http://atlascorpsclass8.eventbrite.com/) by Wednesday, March 7

On Thursday, March 8, 2012, 5:30 – 7:30 PM, join Atlas Corps to celebrate our growing network of 108 Fellows from 32 countries during the Class 8 Welcome Extravaganza! The evening is an opportunity to connect with an elite group of nonprofit leaders from around the world. Details and RSVP at http://atlascorpsclass8.eventbrite.com/

When organizing a workshop, do you ever evaluate and reflect on the content you are going to train on? How do you know the content is ENOUGH? When training, what should you consider to make it participatory and interactive as possible?
Truth be told, I have been a victim of boring my participants to death by feeding them too much information than is required, training with the notion that I am more exposed to the subject than they are and using of power point presentation making my training less participatory and less effective.
Recently I attended a training of trainers and I must say that it was the best training that I have ever attended since I came to the US.
This blog is going to share some of the important insights I took away with me.

LESS IS MORE
As we all know CPR is the art of infusing life back into a person by helping them breathe. In trainings, CPR means Content Participation Review, and it encourages participation and aids the learning process. To reinforce this point, the hippocampus – thought to be the center of emotion, memory, and the automatic nervous system – can only hold about 20 minutes of information, which is then sent to the short memory and either trashed or sent to the long term memory. For the information to be sent to the long term memory, it needs to be continuously reviewed and thus the importance of CPR. In CPR, the chunk of the training is taken up by participation and the feedback session. In organizing your training the following should be adhered to
 Content- up to 8 minutes to introduce the topic, share key information and/or give instructions for the activity.
 Participation – 3 to 15 minutes to allow learners to work with introduced topic during the content section
 Review – 2- 8 minutes to manage learner feedback from the activity and provide important space for the trainer to summarize and bring out key learning and to make links with the topics

LEARNING STYLES 
How often do we appreciate the different types of learners amongst our participants? It is important to appreciate them so as to tailor the training to accommodate all the different types of participants in the room. Types of participants/learners include, the activist who likes to be involved in new experiences, they are open minded and enthusiastic about new ideas but get bored with implementation. The reflectors on the other hand like to stand back and look at a situation from different perspectives. The theorists adapt and integrate observation into complex and logically sound theories and finally the pragmatists who are keen to on trying things out, want concepts that can be applied to their job, they tend to be impatient with lengthy discussions, are practical and down to earth.
When I left the training, I knew where it is that I have been failing and what to do to improve my trainings. Later that evening as I reflected, I concluded that in organizing a training I have to incorporate the basics of Information gathering that include the WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHEN, WHERE and HOW to make it effective and inclusive.

Thanks to InsideNGO for the “bestest” training ever!!

After 27 years of seeing New York in every movie, music video and advertisement I can´t believe that I´m going to be there by this time tomorrow. The visit is going to be short (just two days) and the budget is  very sad, but I couldn´t be in better company or be more excited.

Walking around Walstreet, ice-skating in Time Square or having lunch in Central Park? Two days dont give for much but I´m sure the memory is going to last forever. I´ll tell you how everything went on Thursday, in the meanwhile, don´t work too much guys!!

During the celebration of the MLK Day, I reflected upon the meaning of my volunteer activities in the past. How I got involved? What was my motivation to give my time and knowledge to “others”? Why was the act of giving important to me? So many questions with multiple answers … but I found a more comprehensive answer in the current work that I do at Youth Service America (YSA).
The Semester of Service Strategy Guide by YSA describes service-learning as a relevant way to support learning processes, achievement, and workplace readiness while creating an impact in communities. Service-learning can happen anywhere as long as it provides academic content and learning outcomes plus the direct or indirect service component. Interestingly enough, I realized, as a fellow, that I am working on promoting service-learning projects in US and abroad while building and shaping my own year of service-learning. Therefore I was inspired to share with you the five stages of service-learning which some of you may already know. But here is a brief introduction to what many of us have done, consciously or unconsciously, to transform our ideas into action.
Investigation: research about community needs. In our case, as fellows, or own needs. Do we need international experience in our CVs? Do we want to strengthen our language/communication skills? Are we inspired to learn best practices in the US? Etc.
Preparation and Planning: outline ways to meet the need. Apply to Atlas Corps, research on possible host organizations, creating timelines during the process, listing expenses, etc.
Action: implementation of the plan. Make all the necessary arrangements, with Atlas Corps support, to make the fellowship happen.
Reflection: reflection on the entire experience, knowledge, and skills acquired. Fellows may reflect on how their experiences while serving have impacted their own lives. This is also the feedback provided to Atlas Corps, Host Organizations, other fellows, etc.
Demonstration/Celebration: provide evidence of accomplishments and impact. This is the moment of sharing the skills and knowledge acquired during the fellowship and very importantly the moment in which we validate our stay in US as Atlas Corps fellows as a relevant stage in our lives.
So far, I have experienced the five stages of service-learning in my fellowship. I am now conscious on why I have decided to serve and why it is so relevant in my life!

January was undoubtedly the most exciting and productivity month of my journey as an Atlas Corps fellow serving at Points of Light in Atlanta, GA.

So many things moved forward in my life and I would need hours to be able to describe all of them in a single blog post. However, I would like to share with you a very enriching experience I had being a SBV at Martin Luther King Day (aka MLK day).

First of all, for those who are not familiar with the MLK Day (this basically include all my Brazilian friends):

What is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service?

After a long struggle, legislation was signed in 1983 creating a federal holiday marking the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The federal holiday was first observed in 1986, making 2011 the 25th anniversary of the King federal holiday.

In 1994, Congress designated the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday as a national day of service and charged the Corporation for National and Community Service with leading this effort. Taking place each year on the third Monday in January, the MLK Day of Service is the only federal holiday observed as a national day of service – a “day on, not a day off.” . The MLK Day of Service is a part of United We Serve, the President’s national call to service initiative. It calls for Americans from all walks of life to work together to provide solutions to our most pressing national problems. The MLK Day of Service empowers individuals, strengthens communities, bridges barriers, creates solutions to social problems, and moves us closer to Dr. King’s vision of a “Beloved Community.”

During this very important day in the United States of America, I was invited by one of my co-workers to take part in an event organized by Points of Light, my role was to act as a Skill Based Volunteer in a Community Café in a impoverished community in College Park, GA.

As a SBV, my role was to facilitate a discussion about “Income Generation” among different stakeholders from the community.  At the begin I though this role was far beyond my skills… I have to confess that I  never imagined myself being able to facilitate such discussion in a foreign language and in a reality so different.

I decided to take the challenge and the only think I can say is that the results overcame all my expectations. As I believe a picture is worth a thousand words…  and I have no words to express my experience, I hope you all enjoy it:

Last but not least, at the end I think I did a great job:

 ”You were wonderful in you  role as SBV’s, facilitating and note-taking. We look forward to doing this same type of program/ project in the future and hope that many of you will  participate once again.

Thank you again for your commitment to service and especially to serving on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! ”

 

PS: For those who want to learn more about Skill Based Volunteers as well as local volunteer opportunities I strongly advice to take a look at the HandsOn Network web site.

Volunteering is on the rise. According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, volunteerism is at a 30-year high. Corporations continue to increase their giving and further diversify and develop their employee volunteer programs (source). National campaigns such as A Billion + Change create business value through strategic alignment of philanthropy and business goals by mobilizing billions of dollars of skills-based volunteer services to build the capacity of nonprofits to meet community needs.

Volunteering and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are on the European agenda as well. With the announcement of 2011 as The European Year of Volunteering, developing the ISO 26000:2010 Standard on Guidance on Social Responsibility and the publishing of a renewed EU strategy 2011-14 for Corporate Social Responsibility, among many other initiatives, the European Union took a leap in supporting volunteering at the highest level.

Although trends vary from country to country, corporate civic engagement is growing everywhere. Corporate engagement continues to boom in countries with strong traditions of civic innovation, such as United Kingdom, and even in countries such as Poland, where only 2 percent of companies ran an employee volunteering program in 2008.

Additionally, companies from emerging European markets, where civic consciousness is only awakening, are beginning to realize that corporate civic engagement and corporate social responsibility go beyond being expensive, sporadic PR campaigns and philanthropy. Companies incorporate responsible business principles into core business activities. Corporate volunteering, for example, is becoming an integral part of companies’ strategy and culture and has proved to tackle important organizational and community-related issues.

Kyivstar, a Ukranian telecommunications company and the winner of the National Corporate Volunteering Contest in the Innovation category, is a great example. It is one of the first companies in the country to integrate corporate social responsibility into its business strategy and implement innovative practices and approaches in employee motivation, such as paid release time, impact communication, employee recognition or scalable employee volunteer projects.

Why is this happening? I would speculate that it is globalization that is pushing a new normal in corporate citizenship, as well as empirical evidence of the benefits it generates for the company, its employees and communities.

Companies in America hold a great opportunity in their hands, the power to be leaders in corporate volunteerism for the world around us. In the years ahead, it’s not just the nice thing to do, but the necessary thing to do for businesses to stay relevant and competitive.

To learn more about excellent Employee Volunteer Programs, download our latest Trends of Excellence report for more information about excellence in employee volunteering.

This post was first published on www.pointsoflightblog.org on January 13, 2012