Our Joint Staff Training took place in Berlin from May 8 to 12, 2019. We met in Berlin for five days in order to work out the final shape of intellectual output O4 – the Training Module. Several representatives of each partner institution participating in the project joined the meeting. Michał Faron from the Jagiellonian University Extension – experienced coach and facilitator – facilitated our intensive work in these days.
On the first day we agreed to work within international groups, which allowed us a broader, transnational perspective. Although the final product should address different groups in each country, this project is international, and so we decided to work accordingly. At the very beginning of our meeting we couldn’t see the bright end and were skeptic towards some of Michal’s methods– very creative, cutting our task (very big, ambitious, important) to small pieces. We started and finished each day gathering in one circle and sharing or ideas, fears, reflections. That helped us with defining and redefining a common vision of what we do.
The first part of our work was mainly defining what we have and what we would like to achieve and making sure we are having exactly the same vision on our minds. Because we are from different countries, cultures and backgrounds and our policy contexts vary from country to country, this was sometimes a huge challenge. Furthermore, we had to define our direct and indirect target group and how this affects the content. The next step was to establish strategic, tactical and operational – using military and management naming – goals for our training module.
After finishing this long and tiring process we started to design the module itself. We searched for ideas on the Internet and drew from our previous experiences. Finally we chose three didactical approaches to develop and work on: for a large group, online and for small group. At the end of the Joint Staff Training we were very tired and exhausted but convinced that we have done a great job with the final product. We also spent together a lot of fruitful time which made us a “real” transnational team. We learned a lot from each other and experienced the European sense of solidarity. Of course we have met and worked together before, but we never experienced such a group process before. Working together for one week, in one room and on one task – that was challenging and awarding at the same time. At the same time, our schedule was very tight for this task. Without the excellent work of our facilitator Michal we probably would not have left the room with such a result. Thank you Michal! Thank you, EffectVPL TEAM! We did it well.
