From 10th to 18th September 2021, Alesja and Anna-Liisu participated in the international Erasmus+ training course “Leading Ladder”, run by Shokkin Group Estonia and Be International and hosted by A Jornada dos Heróis in Aguiar da Beira (Portugal). The project topic was facilitation and leadership, and here they share some impressions about their learning and experience!
“Leading Ladder” led us to useful and unique knowledge, incredible people and different cultures. During the week we learned how to communicate and work with different personality types, resolve conflict situations, how to give feedback correctly, and most importantly, how to organize sessions and workshops!
Each team was able to conduct their own session on a topic of their interest for the rest of the group. It was and incredibly useful experience and knowledge! But the most important thing is that on this project I met people with whom we can create incredible things in the future!
The atmosphere on this project was super friendly and disposed to trust and teamwork! It was very good, and even in the mountains in the rain it was warm with you! I really hope to see all the participants soon, I miss you already!
The project was perfect, people, accommodation, schedule, food .. everything was thought out to the details! I would like to say special thanks to the organizers of JORNADA HERÓIS for this. I fell in love with Portugal, its people and culture thanks to this project!”
Alesja Jagolnik
“The purpose of the training was to prepare future group leaders for youth exchanges through discovering different types of leadership, learning more about facilitation and brainstorming on problem solving through past experiences. It also gave me a chance to meet other people who work with youth.
We dived deeper into different aspects of being a leader– question games that start discussions; sharing previous experience in leadership and facilitation; what different types of leaders there are; how to resolve conflicts through non-violent communication and how can the multicultural aspect affect a team and a leader.
We also learned a lot about how different types of people resolve problems and tasks through a very interesting and thorough personality test followed by a practical demonstration. The second half of the week was dedicated to workshop facilitations- we could choose our own topic and worked on facilitating our own workshops and attend others. Through that we also learned how to give feedback more constructively.
We could also think about future opportunities in writing our own youth exchanges and think about future cooperations with other participants.
The official program was thorough and useful, but as always with Erasmus+ projects, the other half (unofficial part) was equally important and educational. We had the chance to hike and orientate through Portuguese nature and landscape on our free day. The evenings were filled with different activities- especially memorable was the Portuguese cultural evening. Since our accommodation was in two hotels, we had a very luxurious breakfast every morning, not to mention the lunches and dinners that were always good. For an Estonian, having such fresh and tasty watermelons, tomatoes, etc. in September is already an experience on it’s own.
And of course perhaps the most important part- the other participants- enriched the training course and gave it a face of it’s own. I had a chance to renew some older connections and to make some new ones and to plan new activities between our sending NGOs for the future. A big thanks to everyone who were a part of making the training course happen!
Anna-Liisu Arukask
