Catch a glimpse of what Eduk8ers have been doing in their local environment for the past few months - the workshops' scope ranges from a few hours workshop for local section to a full 4 days training at the national level and even a short session delivered to the colleagues at work thanks to non-formal education techniques gained through Eduk8! 

1. Flóra Bajnay

  • Event:  Work your Buddies – Workshop on Problem Solving for the Erasmus Buddies
  • Date: 29 March 2018
  • Place: Youth House, Debrecen, Hungary
  •  Topic of the workshop: To realize and define a problem, to analyse and solve it, are essential skills for Erasmus buddies. Team work, active listening, decision making, analytical skills were touched upon.
     

90 minutes flew away quickly when the participants are so much ready to share and contribute. Even though I was very nervous about logistics at the beginning, it turned out to be the best experience as my very first official workshop as an Eduk8er.

  • Event: Workshop on Public Speaking
  • Date: 12 April 2018
  • Place: University of Debrecen, Hungary
  • Topic of the workshop: Fears on stage, skills of a good public speaker and techniques how to practice, what to pay attention to and how to warm up before delivering a speech were discussed.


My first workshop outside of ESN. Even though the workshop was primarily organized for the students at my faculty, more than half of the participants were international students and shared easier than Hungarians, even though none of them is involved in ESN. I experienced a very interesting group dynamic due to these.

  • Event: Workshop on Time Management (for the members of ESN Debrecen)
  • Name of the co-facilitator: József Virga
  • Date: 26 April 2018
  • Place: University of Debrecen, Hungary
  • Topic of the workshop: Realization of the most common “time wasters”, introduction to time management tools and techniques, identifying basic time management mistakes.


Time Management is not my strength and it is a topic József has delivered several times before. Yet we managed to rebuild his workshop with my fresh insights after the Eduk8 Starter and give a mixture of activities and presentation-like knowledge sharing, which was greatly appreciated by our ESN members.

2. Natalia Zindrou

  • Event: NP Geneva 2018
  • Date: 4th April 2018
  • Place: Geneva
  • Topic of the workshop: Personal Development through SMART goals
     

It was overall a very good experience. What I would say I would differently next time: Not put any individual work in such a short workshop but also in such an event where the main purpose of people is to socialize. The workshop was about making participants think about the way they set goals, share their ideas & get new ones about achieving specific goals. The concept of SMART goals was introduced and the participants worked on their personal goals in small groups. At the end of the workshop, the participants were asked to create a plan- using SMART goals- for the first month after they get back home.

3. Verena Waidacher

  • Event:: Intercultural Orientation Sessions, 4-hour workshops
  • Date: Tuesday, 13th of March and Thursday, 22nd of March 2018
  • Place: University of Graz
  • Topic of the workshop: Culture, Intercultural Competence and Culture Shock
     

The two workshops were organised in cooperation with the IRO of the University of Graz. Main idea of the workshops: preparing future outgoing students for their exchange semester. We had very fruitful discussions about culture shock and how to deal with it. It was nice to train local students in my mothertongue for once. That was a new experience for me :D

  • Event: Trainer Side Event at the European Regional Meeting of IFMSA (International Federation of Medical Students' Associations)
  • Date: 19th to 23rd of April 2018
  • Place: Steinschaler Dörfl, Frankenfels, Austria
  • Topic of the workshop: TAT, learning theories, lateral thinking, creativity, trainers toolkit
     

The event was held as a side event of what would be a regional platform in ESN. In total there were more than 300 participants in a small village in the mountains just for us. At the Trainer Side Event, we were 11 pax and 3 trainers - me being the only non-medical student amongst the participants. The main goal was to bring some creativity into the usual preparation patterns of advanced trainers. The challenge was for each of us to prepare a 45min session within 2h preparation time - on a topic we have never delivered before, with methods we have never used before and using preparation methods we would usually not use. I deliverd a successful session on "Dealing with emotions", using a simulation where I created frustration in my pax, to then debrief on how we can deal with frustration. I can only recommend you to join this kind of events from other student organisations. They get you out of your comfort zone and broaden your horizon!

4. Mikko Hyvärinen

  • Event: ESN Uni Wien Team Building
  • Date: 24 March 2018
  • Place: Burg Wildegg, Sittendorf bein Wien, Austria
  • Topic of the workshop: Team Building, Knowledge Transfer & Transition Management


I love to see when the participants get what they need and I can be of help. In this case, I the participants got to work on their transition in a hands-on manner and told me later that this was the push they needed.

  • Event: Section Meeting 2018 Vienna Calling
  • Date: 14 April 2018
  • Place: Fachhochschule des BFI Wien
  • Topic(s) of the workshop(s): Building a Feedback Culture, Knowledge Transfer & Transition Management
     

The weekend was a great cooperation between multiple sections from multiple countries and we had very active participants in both of my workshops.

5. Mateusz Panfiłowicz

  • Event: UPGRADE Rzeszów
  • Date: 19-22 April 2018
  • Place: Rzeszów, Poland - Rzeszów University of Technology
  • Topic of the workshop: Track for new members of local sections in Poland
     

1. [Meet your colleagues SESSION]
2. [Teambuilding SESSION] - Teambuilding as a necessary element of way to create effective team.
3. [Feedback SESSION] - Feedback as important part of projects and useful tool to self-education.
4. [ESN Structure SESSION]
5. [Career in ESN SESSION] - How to find your own place in ESN?
6. [COMMUNICATION SESSION] - Theoretical and practical knowledge of communication.

That was some amazing time during this event. That was my first time when I had the possibility as Edu8er to take part and conduct  3 day training for new ESN members(BIG EVENT, MANY WORkSHOPS). Sometimes was difficult because I wanted to give them a correct training, share with them passion and also set fire to make an action in they ESN career. I learn a lot of thinks e.g: I need to practise my time management skill, ”sometimes less it’s not mean worse”, short presentations, videos or photos also can by useful to explain some long definitions or to present a long text. But I my opinion I just prefer do much more flipcharts. 

I think I had a lot of AHA! or WOW! moments but the most important that was a time when I realized that I want and I need more trainings, workshops to improve not only myself but also to educate society to become them better and happier! Also, I set a new goal to carry training for international people!


6. Julia Peter (aka Jules)

  • Event: Teambuilding ESN TUMi
  • Date: 22 April 2018
  • Place: Schliersee, Bavaria
  • Topic of the workshop: Motivation, Active Listening and Feeback in a Team


It was inspiring to see that they got aware of a topic and want to work on it and improve it as a team for the team.


7. Florian Heinrichs, Linda Bücking

  • Event: Training Days (National Training ESN Germany)
  • Date: 20-22 April 2018
  • Place: Weimar, Germany
  • Topic of the workshop: Agile Event Management


We highly recommend everyone to facilitate at a National Training. It was a lot of fun, the participants were very engaged and the atmosphere was great!

8. Linda Bücking

  • Event: Local Buddy Training
  • Date: 4 April and ongoing
  • Place: Hannover, Germany
  • Topic of the workshop: What is my role as a buddy? Intercultural communication


This year, our International Office has renewed its Buddy Program by offering services beyond the matching process, such like an introductory and an intercultural training. For me, it´s been a very meaningful experience to help local buddies to develop empathy with their buddies as well as a group identity, in order to be able to support each other when problems arise! Next semester, it is planned to also deliver workshops to the incoming buddies.

9. Amber Rousse

  • Event: Onboarding of new joiners (sessions at my work)
  • Date: February 2018
  • Place: Luxembourg
  • Topic of the workshop: Identifying roles within teams
     

I have been fortunate to be able to use the non-formal education techniques I've learned in Eduk8 in my professional life. I work at a corporation where innovation and brainstorming is encouraged, but often people do not know exactly how to get the best ideas out of people. I've tried to become a model and show my colleagues that there are many methods that deliver different results. An example I can give is two sessions geared toward onboarding the new joiners into the department, by explaining the different roles and tasks we have in the team. Traditionally, this had been done by using a powerpoint presentation. I wanted to add some flavor, so I designed a game show where the new joiners would compete against each other to guess the roles of each person. In another session, I adapted a party drinking game to instead match tasks to people. We were still within working hours, so although no alcohol was involved, the participants left laughing as well as informed.


10. Mary Wardak

  • Event: Buddy Country Team Building Weekend (Erasmus Öresund Alliance)
  • Date: 30 March-1 April 2018
  • Place: Torna Hällestad
  • Topic of the workshop: Creative Thinking
     

This was thefirst workshop that I held after the Eduk8 Starter Madeira on the topic of creative thinking. It was a two-hour workshop on brainstorming and lateral thinking with about 18 participants from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Even though I was nervous and incredibly critical the participants came to me afterwards being incredibly motivated and wanting to pass on the knowledge. This gave me the drive and validation to continue the work and keep on improving for the sections.


11. Stephan van de Ven
 

  • Event: Trainer's talent academy
  • Date: 22 April 2018
  • Place: Utrecht office of NJR
  • Topic of the workshop: for participants to experience and explore the use of their body through different facilitation processes and reflect on their feeling. Observing self and other.
     

It was my first time trying something without words or a specific goal in mind. I wanted participants (other trainers and youth workers) to experience a variety of processes (games, body movement, mindfulness, focus, silence, sculpting and more) without any specific goal attached to them. It had an amazing result to see participants surrendering themselves immediately and others hesitated but went for it whole heartedly later. This is something I will continue exploring.