Session 2 At Gracehaven Home
After a 2 week break, we continued our second session with the youth at Gracehaven Home. This week, in addition to my two group mates who initially facilitated the session, I facilitated the first game for both the boys' and the girls' session. To be honest, I was hesitant to facilitate the game as I had no prior experience facilitating a proper session or game with specific outcomes set at the end. I had facilitated games for the freshman orientation camp and small group games for my orientation group, but I did not feel confident this time around. It was mainly because I felt that the youth looked up to us and I felt pressured to perform and be able to say the right things and not mess up as I was being assessed by them. Additionally, I also felt slightly more pressured since our Prof was coming in for the session. Although, she made it clear that she was not assessing us per say, I still felt that pressure that I was being watched by everyone in the room and the fear of not living up to their expectations made me nervous.
The girls' session was first and we started at 11am as the girls had some programme before that. It was my activity at first; and it was a game of 'Heads Up'. I gathered the youth and the rest of my group mates in a circle and I explained to them what a game of Heads Up entailed. They were to pick a card from the box with an emotion written on it, and put it up on their forehead while the rest of their group mates act the emotion out without using words. The youth will have to then guess the emotion based on the way the others are acting. After explaining the game to them, I gave each group the materials and spilt my time with each group, making sure that they understood the game while my group mates helped the youth that they were attached to. At the end of each session, with both genders, I conducted a debrief session whereby I asked them to share about their experiences playing the games. I also shared with them the rationale behind the game; that was to understand that different people have different ways of expressing their emotions and it is important to be aware of different social cues.
Facilitating the games turned out to be more enjoyable than stressful, contrary to what I had originally thought. Being present and being aware of my surroundings was key, I had realised, after trying my hand at facilitation. It was important to give clear instructions and to look for cues to see if your instructions have been understood by all. During the game, as much as I wanted to be a part of the activity and play with the youth, I knew that I had to be attentive to how the youth were responding to the games and if I needed to steer the direction of the game based on the time that we had. In some sense, I wondered how facilitators manage to build rapport with the participants if they always had to multitask. In my future experiences facilitating workshops and sessions, I hope to grasp better how to manage the balance between building rapport and managing the situation on ground.
After the session, during our usual After Action Review (AAR) session, some of my group mates highlighted that during the Heads Up game, some of the youth had been talking about drug usage and getting 'high and trippy'. Since I was facilitating the game with the other group, I did not hear about the drug references on my own accord. We, as a group, found the references to be dangerous since their depictions of their encounters with the substances sounded very real. We then decided as a group to bring that up to the staff at Gracehaven Home as we felt that it was important that we pointed out such potentially damaging information that we caught wind of. On retrospect, I do think as volunteers, it also can be helpful when we raise certain issues to the staff of any organization so as to better protect the youth or anyone in question in the situation. While it may not be a pleasant experience raising up the matter, it is still important that we do the morally right thing to inform the staff.
The girls' session was first and we started at 11am as the girls had some programme before that. It was my activity at first; and it was a game of 'Heads Up'. I gathered the youth and the rest of my group mates in a circle and I explained to them what a game of Heads Up entailed. They were to pick a card from the box with an emotion written on it, and put it up on their forehead while the rest of their group mates act the emotion out without using words. The youth will have to then guess the emotion based on the way the others are acting. After explaining the game to them, I gave each group the materials and spilt my time with each group, making sure that they understood the game while my group mates helped the youth that they were attached to. At the end of each session, with both genders, I conducted a debrief session whereby I asked them to share about their experiences playing the games. I also shared with them the rationale behind the game; that was to understand that different people have different ways of expressing their emotions and it is important to be aware of different social cues.
Facilitating the games turned out to be more enjoyable than stressful, contrary to what I had originally thought. Being present and being aware of my surroundings was key, I had realised, after trying my hand at facilitation. It was important to give clear instructions and to look for cues to see if your instructions have been understood by all. During the game, as much as I wanted to be a part of the activity and play with the youth, I knew that I had to be attentive to how the youth were responding to the games and if I needed to steer the direction of the game based on the time that we had. In some sense, I wondered how facilitators manage to build rapport with the participants if they always had to multitask. In my future experiences facilitating workshops and sessions, I hope to grasp better how to manage the balance between building rapport and managing the situation on ground.
After the session, during our usual After Action Review (AAR) session, some of my group mates highlighted that during the Heads Up game, some of the youth had been talking about drug usage and getting 'high and trippy'. Since I was facilitating the game with the other group, I did not hear about the drug references on my own accord. We, as a group, found the references to be dangerous since their depictions of their encounters with the substances sounded very real. We then decided as a group to bring that up to the staff at Gracehaven Home as we felt that it was important that we pointed out such potentially damaging information that we caught wind of. On retrospect, I do think as volunteers, it also can be helpful when we raise certain issues to the staff of any organization so as to better protect the youth or anyone in question in the situation. While it may not be a pleasant experience raising up the matter, it is still important that we do the morally right thing to inform the staff.
I am glad that your first 'formal' facilitation went well! They say the beginning is always the hardest. I hope this experience makes you more confident to facilitate or lead other groups in the future. I think the most important component of facilitation is the preparation - the equipment, instructions, directions and I think you had it all ready and hence it was smooth. Good job!
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