Post date: Jan 6, 2018 1:50:26 AM
While we have held multiple open campus workshops, the November 11 workshop marked Project Karuiku's first independent workshop in the 2017/2018 academic year.
Obviously, the major challenge associated with hosting workshops is the process of publicizing our project in order to get participants. Project Karuiku has visited three schools in total before the workshop and we are glad that the visits proved to be advantageous. I personally feel a sense of pride because I myself presented this project to the heads of high schools in both Saku and Karuizawa, and those are the areas in which the majority of our participants came from. The total number of participants was 8 individuals towards the end, and we were really happy with this number, as it was not too much and not too little.
Publicizing the project and guaranteeing the participants was only the first step of the process, the next was to choose the game, and set up the venue, alongside the props required. Every single Karuiku member had to wake up at 8 am, during our Saturday weekend day in order to set up the workshop, and I feel that this demonstrates the commitment of all Karuiku members. The fact that no member skipped this process, or came in late shows our sense of responsibility towards the project, and also highlights how important this workshop is to us.
While there were many themes and main objectives that the workshop aimed to accomplish, there were a few that stood up, and one of them was to make the participants recognize the benefits of collaboration. We had a game called “The Amazing Race” and this game really did a good job at exploring the collaboration topic. Participants were divided into three teams, and they had to compete against each other in order to win. There were many stations, including a water and weird food station, and each team had to complete all stations, and do it as quickly as possible as it was a competition about timing. I was personally facilitating and helping throughout the process, and I felt that my job was really important as I was responsible for all the stations, and had to make sure that each one was running with no problems. It is true that I was not the guy who motivated and explained the rules to the participants, but the fact that I helped every station in different ways demonstrates the importance of my job. This job also required patience from my side and I feel that I did well. We were under strict timing constraints and so I had to make sure that the competition was over before a set time, and so each facilitator had to be informed about the timing by me, and I really found myself to be running around the area towards the end. I did develop my patience attribute towards the end, and I feel glad that I had such job, as the main game functioned well when I did my job well.
As stated earlier, recognizing the benefits of collaboration was the main learning outcome of this workshop, and we ensured that our games were geared towards this outcome. For instance, we had a game called the ‘blindfold challenge’. In this game, people were divided into pairs, and one member of the team had to wear a blindfold, while the other had to tell them where to go and what to do. The blindfolded person had to find balls, and then throw them at another competitor team, and the partner had to tell him where to aim and how far away to throw. This game is really fun, but is also powerful in highlighting the benefits of communication and collaboration. Participants come to realize that the key to winning is to listen and trust their partners, and that in itself shows that with unity comes good results. We also describe those ideas and use life analogies such as how engineers have to collaborate and work together to build a project, and how doctors have to work with their colleagues in order to save lives.
The members did have fun, and were all sad when they workshop came to end, and when we had to say our goodbyes. I feel that these workshops are really empowering as we hope that the participants get a more clear understanding of the learning outcomes that we present, and how they correlate to real life instances. We as Karuiku members don’t just do this to pass CAS. We believe that we can make a difference with those lessons that we try to teach through fun games and activities. It is true that we all have our futures to look forward to, but there is no harm in trying to empower those that are younger than us. Those students will go on to become leaders in this world, and this is why we believe that our project is powerful.