Workcamp participants have a lot of conflict situations during their workcamps living and working together abroad in a team of multicultural participants. Many times, these situations are not revealed and participants try to survive a short camp without stating this, which can lead to bad feelings and memories. Other times they have a harsh conflict and they are not able to discuss and solve them with the fellow volunteers. This session could help to release the stress accumulated during workcamp conflicts, to show techniques for next time and support volunteers to keep an open-mind for new volunteering opportunities.

Pre-session CHECKLIST

pax are informed about the subject

there is enough big space to sit in a circle

facilitators are prepared to deal with feelings (for example better to have 2 trainers, so one can go side with an impacted volunteer)

Step-by-step IMPLEMENTATION

Introduction – Feeling’s thermometer (10-15 mins)

Ask participants to stand up and be ready to answer some questions only with physical movement. “I will define the two ends of the spectrum and please stand to that point on the line that best represents your point of view. It can be on one end or in the middle, anywhere as this is a scale.”

Scales to ask:

Interesting - Boring

Relaxed - Stressed

Friendliness - Aloofness

Patient - Frustration

Compassion - Hostility

Agreement - Disagreement

Trust - Scepticism

Reserved - Dominant

🎩 Pro tip: Moving always has more impact. Minds move when bodies move!

💻Virtual version: Create a digital whiteboard (e.g. Jamboard) for volunteers and prepare the scales one-by-one in advance. Ask participants to use a textbox and put their name on that point, which represents their answer.

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Shorter reflective activity – version A – Story line (30 mins)

Ask the participants to review their workcamp experience in a graphical way, focusing on the emotional ups and downs, by drawing a graph. “Please take an A4 or A3 paper and draw a line in the middle, mark the time before the camp, the start date of the camp, the days one by one, and the time after the camp. The space below the line represents the downs (hard/difficult feelings) and the space above the ups (happy and good feelings). Write on the ups and downs of what happened with you, the facts and name the feelings.”

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11 Major Types of Graphs Explained (With Examples)

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Give them 15-20 minutes to sit aside alone and create their own graph and get ready to share it in pairs. After the time is over, ask participants to sit back in a big circle and start to be ready to share their graphs.

Some supportive questions may be:

Name 5 feelings/emotions at different points on your line.

Tell the story in 5 sentences while moving along the line.

What (if anything) did you do to turn an up into a down or vice versa?

How did others (or other causes) turn an up into a down or vice versa?

How did your feelings influence what you said or did?

How did your feelings influence what others said or did?

Were others aware of your feelings?

How aware were you of the feelings of others? Were they following a similar or different pattern?

Try to focus on revealing difficult situations coming from working together with other volunteers, staff, so the conflict situations.

🎩 Pro tip: Passing is allowed in the sharing circle! You may change the questions to make them more suitable.

💻Virtual version: Prepare a digital whiteboard for every participant with the timeline and ask them to draw their graph by putting post-it on the biggest ups and downs. In the post-it they should write the event and the feeling they had at that point.

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Shorter reflective activity – version B – Story line (30-45 mins)

Ask a volunteer to sit in a chair in the front of the group. Ask him/her to “Tell an episode of the volunteering in your mother tongue when you felt extremely angry and frustrated. Choose an event which is not too intimate for being told in this circle. Do your best to let your listeners know how you feel when talking about this story. But don’t overdo it, you are not an actor. Try to be yourself! Express, however, as much emotion as you would show to people you trust.”

Give approximately 3 minutes to tell the story and ask the other participants to find out how s/he felt. “What s/he felt during that situation? Can you feel the same? Did you feel the same anytime in the past?”

Ask the volunteer to briefly explain the situation in the common language and try to discuss with the team the case, the issue, problems.

You may ask 1-2 more volunteers to share their story.

💻Virtual version: Put the storyteller in a spotlight on the online meeting and ask the participants to write in the chat during the speech what emotions they feel in this situation. The round discussion can go as in live, ask participants to apply and unmute to keep the respect to each other.

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Longer NFE activity (90 mins)

5’ Ask them what they think about this statement by Carl Rogers: “We have one effective tool to change the behavior of others: changing our own behavior", facilitate a discussion and at the end share with the participants the problem graph in the appendix.

10’ Describe the empathy and I-message meanings.

10’ Ask two volunteers for a role-play and hand over them the below short descriptions, after asking them not to share the description with anybody now:

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Situation A:

You’re talking to a friend planning your common evening out tomorrow.

You would like to go to the cinema, watch the new film of your interest, then sit down in a quiet cafe where you could exchange info about the newest gossip from your common volunteering.

As you are single, you want to be listened to and receive some good advice from your friend. You are having an attraction towards a colleague but not sure what to do: initiate an affair, or wait until the others’ affection becomes clearer.

Most likely your friend wants a different program for the evening, but you hope you can convince her/him.

Situation B:

You’re talking to a friend planning your common evening out tomorrow.

You would like to go to a fancy new restaurant first, which serves fine seafood and crawls with people (always crowded).

Then you would go to a pub where your single friend could hopefully meet someone and start a relationship. You would also like to meet someone new, instead of your current boy/girlfriend (partner), who you are bored with.

The evening could then finish as a double date, or you and your friend could go on your separate ways with the new partners…

Most likely your friend wants a different program for the evening, but you hope you can convince her/him.

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Let’s have a 5 minutes role-play and at the end ask the participants to guess “What the real needs of the storytellers are?”.

15’ Discuss with the participants what empathy is and how they can practise it. “It’s not easy to be empathic, as some people have never shown their feelings, they may even be strangers, or you might feel forced by your relationship to be polite and diplomatic. The steps you might take, are:

Listen to what he says and be aware of his voice, face, posture as well.

Guess what he would say fair and square.

So, what’s his real problem here?

Put it in a way he would easily admit!”

30’ Ask participants to “Please recall a situation from your volunteering, when somebody did something or behaved somehow that made you dissatisfied, and you even tried to discuss it”. Ask them to write down what they said that time and ask a couple of participants to share their sentences.

After a sentence ask the group to state I-messages instead:

Observation - Describe the behavior, according to what the specific sentence was said. What did the person do that was in disharmony with your needs?

Feeling - What did you feel?

Need - What need of yours was hurt, was not satisfied by the behavior of the other person? In other words, what is the reason for your feelings described above?

Request - What would you like the other person to do? (What did one hear? What does one feel now? What does one think now? Is one willing to do something?)

If participants are not open to sharing situations, you may use the below ones, print them out and ask some volunteers to read the situation and try to formulate what they would say in that case.

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You have been put in charge to lead a group of ten volunteers in a program, when you realize that one member of the group would desperately like to take over the leadership from you, which really annoys you.

You have been asked to do some extra service, which you do with reluctance, because you have some more important things to finish. At the camp it is regarded improper if a conscientious volunteer rejects any kind of work.

You come up with loads of remarkable ideas to improve the volunteering at your camp, but your leaders always suppress your efforts. You would like to change this situation.

You are participating at an event, where the trainer addresses the men by their first name, while he says ‘My darling’, when she turns to a woman. The trainer turns to you and says: ‘Well my darling, what did you say?’

You are standing in a long queue at lunch. It is just about your turn when a man walks up to you and asks you to give him two boxes of lunch as he is in a rush. You do not like this behavior.

You are sitting at a lecture and the person sitting next to you is smoking, which annoys you. When he is about to light a cigarette, he/she asks you if you mind the smoke.

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15” Appreciate all tries and try to reformulate them with the participants to I-statements.

To close the activity, shortly explain what conflict means:

finding the most effective response to maintain and restore our own balance and order with as little damage as possible

finding the most acceptable response to the conflict problem for everyone

while listening to the other: in the conflict, the other's needs and feelings are also hurt as little as possible.

Finally you may ask feedback from participants “How you could use the learning (empathy / I-message) in the future?”

💻Virtual version: For the empathy part ask participants to type in the chat what they think is the real problem of the role-players meanwhile the situation plays. After the situation asks them to formulate sentences they would admit the other’s feelings. For the I-statement part, create pairs in break-out rooms, assign each pair a situation and ask them to try to formulate their I-statement. After 5-10 mins ask everybody in a big group to share their solution and try to advance them together.

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Input – Check about the main conflict situations in a camp

As in the first activity, ask participants to stand up and be ready to answer some questions only with physical movement. Now there are only two options, YES or NO, and ask everyone to decide where they stand, there are no middle options now.

Use the 15 “List of assertive rights'' statements in the appendix, read them out loud and ask participants to make a ‘silent statement’ by choosing to stand on either end of the scale. When they decide, ask them to talk with a neighbor about why they chose to stand where they are. Ask participants to look around at the overall pattern or at where individuals have chosen to be. Any surprises / comments / questions?

💻Virtual version: Ask participants to switch on their camera in this activity and how would say yes for a statement should apply in live. Instead of the pair discussion ask them open questions to justify their answer and check in all questions the group patterns.

REVIEW & DEBRIEFING

Ask feedback from participants how they could use the learning (empathy / I-message) in the future? Once the reflection session is done, ask participants how it was for them to share their stories with each other. Did they notice any similarities and differences between each others’ stories? Was there anything they see differently now then during or right after the workcamp? What was their biggest learning in the workcamp?

TARGET GROUP size & specifics

8-16 participants workcamp participants, leaders

DURATION

150-180 minutes

TO DO List

& Deadlines

Additional resource

This session works best with participants who gave negative feedback about their camp experience to transform the event to learning, but can also be done as an individual session.

Whose problem is it?

List of Assertive Rights

In order to keep your self-respect and diligence you have the right to take the necessary steps even if someone finds it harmful — provided that your intentions are not aggressive.

If you are not sure about how to interpret your self-assuring rights, you have the right to clear it up with the person concerned.

You have the right to do anything as long as you do not disturb, restrict or be unfair to someone, and do not prevent anybody from enforcing his/her rights.

You have the right to make mistakes, and bare their consequences.

You have the right to change your decisions.

You have the right to make illogical decisions.

Before you make the final decision, you have the right to say: „I do not know”, if someone inquires either tactfully or tactlessly whether you seized up all the consequences and factors of your decision.

You have the right to judge, be responsible for and bare the consequences of your own behavior, thoughts and feelings.

If it does not affect a preliminary agreement or mutual interest, you have the right not to explain and not to justify your behavior before others.

You have the right to shape your relations to the others in your own ways, provided that you do not violate the others’ rights.

You have the right to decide whether you take the responsibility or not for solving others' problems.

You have the right to feel independent from the goodwill of others when you arrange your affairs with them, and you have the right to avoid winning their trust in advance.

You have the right to say that you do not understand what the others intend to say when they want to express their intentions, problems, feelings and thoughts by using only signs and they expect you to find them out yourself.

You have the right to be alone.

You have the right to steadily follow your goals even if it meets with the others’ condemnation, provided that your activity does not prevent anybody from enforcing their rights.

There are no rows in this table

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