Workshop 3, 2017 – Be the Change Youth Leadership Series
The Be the Change Workshop Project is aimed at 9 to 16 year olds. The focus of the workshops is on leadership development. The facets explored include the inner workings of leadership as a planner, organiser, ambassador, consensus builder, spokesperson, coach and problem solver. This will involve youth coming together regularly to learn and network. Three 2-hour workshops were held in in April, July and October 2017.
On the 24th of September, the 3rd Be the Change Workshop for 2017 was held at Monash University. The focus of this workshop was on “Our Changing World”. The workshop was centered on team building activities that would encourage the students to consider the wider world around them.
The workshop started with a 9-letter word un-jumble commonly seen in daily newspapers. This ‘puzzling’ task was followed by a presentation from guest speaker Priya Agarwal. Priya is a current Monash University Commerce & Engineering student who was more than willing to share her experiences. From working in India for an engineering firm to developing her musical talents from a young age, Priya was able to put growth and development of one’s self in a context that the students could relate to. As a current student herself, she was able to contextualise the journey ahead of the students present at the workshop.
Priya’s presentation was followed by an open-ended discussion question – “What are the major changes our world is going through right now?’
This discussion, broken into smaller groups, raised interesting topics such as Climate Change, North Korea, and The Refugee Crisis to name a few. The students were very apt in this understanding of what the wider world around them was currently experiencing. Each group of 6 students was given one of the above-mentioned topics and given instructions to delve deeper into their implications moving forward.
This robust conversation was followed by a series of games, which put them in following scenarios:
- Students had to choose from a list of mundane items to take with them to a desert island.
- Students had to convey a message consecutively “Chinese whispers” style from one side of the group to the other
- Students were tasked with fitting everyone onto a “magic” carpet without anyone in the group falling off the carpet in question.
A light pizza lunch was provided following another successful ‘Be the Change’ session. The high turnout and general growth in skills of the attending students throughout the 3 workshops in 2017 is a testament to the dedicated effort and commitment shown by the students who participated.
The aim of the 2017 set of workshops was to build practical leadership skills through extensive teamwork and communication. While previous years workshops had been slightly more theoretical, the 2017 workshops focused on building leadership experience through activities and discussions wherever possible. This has led to many of the students taking on leadership positions at school and with their other extra-curricular activities. The 2018 workshops aim to help the students to continue growing into the young dynamic leaders they are shaping into.
Please email vhpvic@gmail.com or hya@vhp.org.au if you are interested in participating in the youth leadership series in 2018. It promises to be another exciting series of workshops for youth leadership.