Dear reader,

It’s a week since we have finished our 10-day intense international training course in Solution Focused Coaching for youth workers working with disadvantaged young people.

Already a week passed and I’m still not catching up with what has just happened.

The training course brought alltogether 31 people from 11 different EU countries. I’ve worked with many groups before and have had many trainings behind me, however this group was something special. It was pure heaven.

The outline of our training was quite daring and demanding – not everyone is able to spend 10 or more days out in the wild, without shops, sleeping in a barn with about 25 other complete strangers, without a drop of alcohol and with an agenda of working whole day long from 7.30AM until 18.30PM. Further, we designed the training programme in a way that our participants first experience Solution Focused in action, before actually giving it a name and explanation. This has caused some frustration and confusion at first, as the group was shaken and irritated. But we did not want to provide the answers up front. We wanted them to discover it themselves. However we could not anticipate the story would unfold like this.

We were lucky. The group managed splendidly. They learned. Fast, incredibly fast. The level of energy did not drop throughout the whole training. They wanted more and they self organized in order to get more from us. It was a huge privilege to work with such a group and to see it’s caterpillars turning into butterflies, one by one.

At the end of the course I was extremely proud. Proud to have created an atmosphere for such intense learning. Proud to have been able to witness the group and individual’s progress. And grateful for this opportunity to bring Solution Focused training to the target group that would otherwise never experience it.

I think this training course is an important milestone. I learned so much. About the group’s dynamics, about Solution Focused Approach, about myself as a trainer and myself as a coordinator. The project isn’t over yet, just it’s main activity has ended. We have much more work to do to track and monitor progress and to prepare a short video about it. Since it’s start back in December 2015, the project has changed a lot. Also the crew has changed. We kicked off with seven facilitators and now we are three in the end. And those three will take the project further. It was a huge gamble and risk bringing together new people, new partners as well as a new training design. However for some reason, not many things went wrong. There were some lessons, as I learned to choose people to work with really carefully and we learned more about what works and what doesn’t. But the bottom line was that the only complaint we received was that people were getting fat. A justified complaint I should say, so compliments to our cooks!

I also learned so much from my colleague trainers and from our dear participants, and am really looking forward to our future projects. Not sure yet what they might be. Maybe Coaching for Change 2?

Dear Betül, Mounir, Natalie, Gaya, Moonika, Madli, Bori, Bence, David, Anna, Pompei, Foued, Sofia, Dejvi, Lauma, Giovanni, Tim, Kamila, Paulina, Maja, Tina, Tinka, Denis, Aixa, Silvia,  Ella, thank you so much for being able to get to know you better and to be a small part of your learning journey!

Naomi, Giulia, Raúl, Bea, Hannes, Finn, thank you for your support throughout the project and for your future ideas and inputs!

Matjaž, Mojca, Jana, Romana thank you for your logistic and tehcnical support!

Leah and Árpi, thank you for making this training excellent, outstanding and what it was – a miracle in action! I’m honoured to be your co-trainer and am looking forward to more!

Biba

Click here for more pictures.