Team Building - a Facilitators View

I have been writing this blog for a few months now and I am going to take a shortcut I think you are going to like. This blog is directly from one of our facilitators who just returned back from a philanthropic team building event in St. Thomas. It is good for you to see a team building event through his eyes. I think you’ll feel after reading this as I felt, like I was there.

“Back home, long flights but well worth it. I thought I would send some pictures along and let you know exactly what we were able to do. LifePath’s main points are Self, Family and Community. We were able to tie it all together with this We Care for Kids.

I started with some comedy and warm ups. The warm I chose was ‘Teach Me’. I divided the group into 15 teams of 9. Each person was able to teach someone on their team something they didn’t know when they woke up that morning. I then had each team teach the group as a whole one thing they learned.
Everyone left knowing at least 9 new things. They loved this, I tied this in with self and family. So we learned to say good morning in French, a hand and eye test, a dance move, how to clap in double time and this first Synagogue on US land was in St Thomas. They really loved learning all this. I kept it fast paced and with some positive comedy. We then moved to the build.

We built 16 bikes, over 60 bears, over 60 camp packs and around 24 toys. After we completed everything we brought them all ( bikes toys, etc ) on to the stage. It was quite impressive. We talked about what we had done (dancing around what was going to happen with them )

The next morning at 8:30AM we all met back in the room and we had kids come in and the charities spoke. When we brought the kids in – tears of joy were running down everyone’s face.

We let the kids choose what they wanted. I choked up when I asked one little girl about the bike she chose and she said it was not for her but for her sister who was sick and could not come. Here is this little girl, who when faced with a choice of many toys and bikes didn’t think of herself, but of her sister. How touching is that?

Through this program we were able to touch over 200 kids!

The charities in St. Thomas were:

1. Kids Scope – A safe house for battered women and their children
2. Community Foundation – helps with grants and distributes money and supplies to childrens programs
3. Catholic Charities – works with homeless families
4. Family Resource Center – has child care and after school programs for the working poor.

This was by far my best program, not only from a facilitator stand point, but as in giving.

There are some very cool moments that happen in this job:

- When you see all the smiles on a groups face that we created.
- While they are doing a task, just hearing the ideas, the planning, the laughter and knowing you helped create this.
- When you see the fruits of the labor – everything on stage lined up.
- When you see the looks on the kids faces and turn and see the look on the group. The love that is in the air is overwhelming.

We as a team created what happened in St Thomas. Pat is so great to work with. He organized and had a clear game plan on how the program would run. We worked well as a team getting things there, getting bikes, setting up the room

A team effort on your end as well, getting us there, support, booking the gig. A total team effort.

Ready for the next one.

Michael Riley, Master Facilitator"