iINTERACT (training for new trainers) – Armenia

Armenian Switzerland or Little Switzerland – This is how locals call beautiful Dilijan in Armenia where we spent beautiful week because of “iINTERACT” trianing for trainirs. Almost 30 pariticipants (aim was to have 3 participants from each country and 10 participating 

countries) from Armenia, Czeh republic, Moldova, Georgia, Italy, Germany, Neetherlands, Romania, Cyprus, Finland. The whole project was about understanding how to deliver a message to a group, how to interact with the group and how to even link members of the group with each other to maximazie the effectivness. Simply it was about how to be a trainer 🙂

 

The first day we went for a beautiful walk and talk in Dilijan. So simple and so strong activity. Walking around new place where you are going to spend one more week meanwhile having brainstretching activities to answer made us connect and understand each other more. First day was also all about introduction of the programe and organisation as such and also about teambuilding games to make group prepared to work together for next 7 days.

 

The second day we reminded ourselfes the differences between formal, non-formal and informal education and started to make an artwork of our wish. It could be painting, origami, some structure from papers, but then we switched the artwork with a partner and he had

to change it. All this happened without any communication in pairs. One just watched the second changing his artwork. For some it was hard to see their masterpiece being changed for some not, but on the other side some were also afraid to change somebodys work. As a trainer you mostly are going to work with somebody and that somebody will want to go a bit or much different direction and this is going to change the result. Also that day we had a lot of activities about getting to know with ourselves as a trainer what are our values and how can we use them and profit from them as a trainer.

 

The third day was hard for lot of us and looked a bit like in a theatre as we had to change ourselfes COMPLETELY. To become reversed person, but not just about wearing somehting you normally dont but mainly to behave and to have face expressions that you normally dont use. The hardest part on it was that one person stayed for few minutes in front of all others and they described him and then voted if they think it´s reversed version or not. Those who didnt pass first round then had to talk with those who did and ask for help to pass the second round

 

The fourth day was all abotu appreciation and reflection of past days. Standing in front of whole group again choosing two people. One of them who is most inspiring for you in the group and second who challanges the most. Continuing with tunnel of love and afternoon was

free. Some of us went to see the monasteries other went to nearby city for ziplining and horse riding. 

 

The fifth day was all about getting into practice what we learned. We were split into groups of three and one group of four and we had to make our own workshop for 45 minutes about whatever we wanted. It was not just good experience for those who did it at the moment

and then hearing criticism from their team members what they would do differently and also from the trianers, but I have to say that all the workshops were interesting as such and I took learning points from all of them.

 

The sixth day we still continued because the previous day we just had time to prepare the workshops and three of groups made it that day but the rest 5 groups made it on day sixth and then we had reflection on all of the workshops shared what each of us took from it.

 

The last seventh day was again all about reflection of all the previous day and sharing with the others what you learned what we liked and what we didnt, but most important thing was that we made plan on how we are going to use what we learned and hearing others plans made us to do little groups with similar interests and think of a project we would like to do together. I believe that it was very effective and we can look forward to seeing amazing projects coming up thanks to iINTERACT.

 

I would like to say big and huge thanks to both organisations EYCB and Loesje Armenia. Its my second time going on project like this and second time with EYCB and Losje 🙂 And would be more than happy to go on more amazing life changing projects with those organisations

in the future.