RETURN TO NORMALCY

april 12th, the beginning... (Day zero)

First contact, the start of this incredible Adventure that we were all able to co-create together. For most of you, the start was taking the first glimpses of Lisbon!!!

As soon as we arrived in Moita, our first meal in the ETPM school and a speed date in the hostel, just among us, so we could get to know each other, with a personal presentation made by someone else's words.

April 13th, sensing (day one)

Hosting & Getting to Know Each Other

In the first session, we had the opportunity to meet ETPM coordinator André Miranda and the event coordinator Estrella to present the program, setup the tone for the upcoming days and play Name Bingo Card so everyone could know a little bit better who is who in the Training Course. The winner was Kristina, who said out aloud "Bingo"!!!

Following this moment, everyone had a chance to expose what were their expectations, fears, needs, proposals for activities during the free time, list of icebreakers and energizers for the days to come and rules of engagement throughout the event. These were made available through the whole program and the organization provided space for everyone to engage and make it a part of the training course.

Then, we had the chance to have breakfast with the amazing kitchen and cafeteria staff, which were with us throughout the week. We left for the first moment of our training, which was to immerse ourselves into nature in Mata da Matinha and create a greater awareness regarding our own senses, the importance they have in our daily lives.

Grounding

Wim took the helm to assure that we would be all grounded, facilitating the space for everyone to start each one of us in an inner dive, with focus on conscious breathing exercises, taking off our shoes and do a silent barefoot walk in the forest, paying attention to all the little details and for all to roam free as a group.

Meantime, we had moments to reflect together and feel the beautiful collective energy that was starting to surface, as well as we had a guided meditation session to bring forward all the impressions we had during the walk.

"...Breathe in the words I trust myself
Breathe in the words
I respect myself
Breathe in the words I forgive myself.
Breathe in the words
I love myself..."

Sensing Self & Earth

We had time for a picnic lunch right after and recovered some energy for the next part of the session, where we would need to have a blindfold walk in the forest. In pairs, everybody chose someone from the group to make this walk, finding and choosing affinity with a tree nearby. In turns, every participant had the chance to be Present, looking for those small connections with nature around. In the end, we had a group reflection to sort some of our interactions, get some breathing time and head back to ETPM school.

Foods & Moods

The last moment of the day came with a challenge! In the school kitchen, we had a small presentation regarding how food affects our moods. Then, the action call, hands on for some cooking…

Everybody had to be fully equipped and an array of several Asian inspired cooking recipes were taken by all as a team effort, which was fully embraced for first discoveries, laser focus and gibberish talk with some singing in the mix. We had the chance to indulge ourselves in some lentil and farm chicken soup, salads, corn and buckwheat tortillas, fried vegetables, yellow Asian rice, spicy farm chicken and tofu main dishes, natural chocolate snickers and chia pudding with fresh fruits and honey. What a feast in the end!!!

April 14th, grounding (day two)

Evaluation Groups

This day started doing daily evaluation reflections, where we split participants into 4 groups for the whole week. We've got a chance to have first impressions from all regarding the program, training sessions, location, accommodation and amenities, which made us adapt our organisation to improve the program flow, people’s interactions and, in an impartial way, create an opportunity to find a safe space for everyone. We had the opportunity to repeat these group evaluations at the end of day 3 and our final evaluation with the whole group on day 6.

Life Pathways

Coming back from the safe space we provided during the previous day, where the senses and a well balanced inner mindset could settle in, the next training session was focused on giving time for everybody to connect with their past and its memories. Pedro set the mood, allowing emotions and senses started to set in, as participants had the chance to go through every year in their life and assess meaningful moments in silence and within their own reflections, but also being able to see others go through their inner processes, enhancing the collective feeling that we're all connected.

Meditation & Inner Journaling

After these moments of profound insights, a guided meditation allowed those involved to come back to their core and time was given for everyone to register their discoveries and do some inner journaling. For this moment, a set of several relevant questions were provided, in which the first question was mostly to get everyone to write about their true life purpose, giving some time for each to be in the flow. After, mostly to show how the mind works, a sequence of several questions followed, with the duration of just one minute, to see how anxiety and frustration could set in, when you don't have the time to fully formulate your response.

Personal & Archetype Library

In the second part of these daily sessions, we asked some of the participants (Pedro, Christof and Liliana) to bring forward life stories of their own, as if they would be Human Books for others to explore. Meanwhile, as a second part of the dynamic, other participants could interrupt these stories and recreate, according to their imagination and perception of the human books, to add flavour to it. In the end, we were able to see the similarities and differences between the human books' real life time stories and the made up events brought through everyone's perspectives, which allowed everyone to explore how people's perceptions can be enhanced or deceived by our tendency to fill in the gaps, according to our perspectives and life experiences.

Circles of Life

Liliana offered us a chance to explore how we connect with stereotypes by making a connection between Nature and ourselves. Participants were split in groups and each had collective decisions on which ecosystems they had an interest in and found a common one for each of the groups. Interestingly, most groups selected water as the main element of connection and the only group not doing it, chose the absence of it (the desert) and the importance it has. After this stage, all participants could choose an element from that ecosystem to which they resonate individually and draw it, then collectively make the connections between them and in the end relate on how all these ecosystems connect. We finished by taking conclusions about the whole process and which lessons everyone had from this collective process.

April 15th, reaching (day three)

Nature walking for Praia do Rosário

We jump started the day in the salt mines, close to Moita, having one of the icebreakers participants brought the days before. After this, we had the privilege of Christof bringing his own experience, as an ecologist and protected natural reserve expert, to help all of us interpret the nature walk and observations we had throughout, while at the same time discovering the fauna and flora and integrating some of the lessons brought from the Circles of Life training session.

Mirroring

At the same time, at the start of the walk, we asked everyone to bring their personal items and the meaningful stories to share. Participants were asked to pair themselves, according to their curiosity towards each other, engaging together during the nature walk and on the beach, in a way that they would find time to explore personal views and life experiences and create a stronger bond between. After the previous days, the intention setup allowed everybody to feel more open to talk through more meaningful memories and process their previous life experiences, in a place of safety and trust, while at the same time, having someone who could mirror these insights.

In the skin of others

Estrella facilitated this session, according to the evaluation groups, offering every participant an opportunity to go through their professional and work experiences, which was shared among all participants. This conversation highlighted behaviours and how archetypes, stereotypes and insights can influence our own personal experiences in life, with different perspectives being brought up, while asking participants to put themselves in the shoes of each other.

What is your stereotype

Afterwards, an active exploration of the topics discussed, through live portraits and/or theatre, all the groups had a moment to represent life experiences that were shared previously and present creatively to the rest of the participants examples of stereotypes, as well as ways to think differently on how to surpass these with actions to empower those suffering these difficult situations.

Intercultural evening

Each participant had the opportunity, collectively or individually, to have a space for intercultural sharing and learning and represent their own country and culture, through their national food, drinks, clothes, promotional materials, dances and music.

April 16th, becoming (day four)

You are your Superhero

After a small walk and an energizer to put everyone more active, we began to get a better sense of individual perspectives by calling forth the artist in each participant. Everyone had the opportunity to present themselves, with their own profile image but as a superhero, which after they could share it or not, with all the others. Then, we asked all to depict which kind of superpower would represent their closer nature, to think about a short bio, personal story and weakness of its character and in the end, present it to the group.

Mapping to get skills for Life

The start of this training session began with a comprehensive story of how the Erasmus+ program evolved from its beginning, followed by a round up with all participants about previous experiences and explanations about which kind of opportunities they could take, within the several key actions and funded projects. A short resume of how the Youthpass certificate could be useful to express a formal, non-formal or informal education experience followed. We addressed, through an open call for everyone, to bring forward 5 soft skills gained until now in this training course, as a compliance for the description of what has been the experience. In the end, everyone had to group them together, accordingly with the 8 competence groups of the revised framework for lifelong learning.

Free afternoon

Participants had a half day to have a moment off the event and basically connect together without any established program. Most chose to cruise to Lisbon and discover the wonders of the city.

April 17th, evolving (day five)

Visioning

Due to last minute confirmations, we had the chance to make available for participants a cultural visit into a salt mine museum, a traditional river shipyard and a kayak activity, kindly offered by the Moita municipality. These extra free time activities implied a lot of rearrangements to the program, which made us compile many of the training course activities that were previously thought of, into shorter and workable sessions, which would lose track of all our previous intentions.

To start the day, we began a training dynamic based on the construction of a fictional storyline, where each participant could add a phrase, within a start and a finish of the story, into a first collective vision of a future built by all. Then, we asked all participants to think and make a projection of how each sees themselves in 2030 and share it, as a goal to be achieved in the future. After this first step, we asked all to make a retrospection to the end of 2023, as a way to help everyone to think of milestones that could be consistent and achievable, towards future intents depicted before.

At the end of this session, we visited and talked with some ETPM teachers and group them with the training course participants, where they could speak about how they felt about the future of the school and also their role in it, as well as future challenges in 2025 and in the end of 2023.

Build-up Personnas // Build connections with the world

The second part of the morning session began with a short explanation on how entrepreneurship historically happened and the importance it took to fundamentally showcase how individual or collective endeavours could offer the chance for anyone to engage actively, not only in a business sense but also regarding citizenship. A presentation of 6 stereotypes was shared with all participants, based on the "Value Proposition Design", inspired by the Business Model Canvas, as one of the most relevant tools in entrepreneurship for collective action plans.

We asked all participants to use this knowledge and examples to explore the school precinct and engage actively students, teachers, and staff. These offer meaningful insights for all to research through different means, with inspiration by all the previous talks with the ETPM teachers, to question and co-design together, within groups of 4, what could be the challenges and solutions for the school in the upcoming years, using this opportunity to prepare proposals to be presented for the school board and students assembly.

Cultural visit & Kayak activity

We had the opportunity given from the Moita municipality to have some free time leisure activities, which allowed us to have several municipality staff members, from the cultural and education departments, to guide us on a visit and understand how salt production happens, how a traditional Tejo river ship is born and also dies. In the end we had the chance for a kayak moment, where all participants took the necessary safety procedures to fully enjoy this sport activity.

April 18th, collaborating (day six)

Participation & Collective Decision Making Model

The day started with ETPM representatives from the Students Assembly, engaging actively our training course participants and getting to know each other, on a peddy paper activity around the school to reinforce previous insights and increase knowledge of what could be the school proposals for the future. Groups were created in such a way that there would be at least one Portuguese participant, able to fully express themselves in English, to help out as much as possible to all the others, while being part of this dynamic.

Students Assembly simulation

In this moment of the morning session, the ETPM representatives from the Students Assembly had a simulation of how they work collectively to present proposals to the school responsibles, while at the same time each previous group member was part of the whole session as observers, paying attention to what was going on and how the construction of proposals and decision making process happened.

Using 4 different stereotypes, we asked each training course participant to represent different roles in their assessment to the ETPM student assembly representatives. These stereotypes were the devil's advocate (putting blocks and counters regarding any decision made), the idea generator (brainstorming all sorts of ideas to support the proposals), the caretaker (assuring that everyone's feeling and emotions are taken care of) and the legalist (guaranteeing that everyone is being impartial and taking into account all sides).

In the end, we had an additional participant, Alana, who was an all around observer of these dynamics and monitored the whole experience, providing precious feedback regarding group dynamics and the collective decision making processes.

School Proposals & Action Plan

At the start of the afternoon session, we asked the groups from day 5 and day 6 to gather together and offer their group perspectives, structuring their observations and conclusions to build up the school proposals around their insights, future challenges, opportunities to evolve and milestones needed to achieve those goals, having into mind the end of 2023 and 2025.

Personal Commitments & Personal, Group & Project Evaluation

We offered a mural with name envelopes for every participant to write something meaningful regarding each other, as well as write in their journals about future steps and personal commitments, based on all the experiences lived. We also asked for people's evaluation regarding several dimensions on how the training course happened through an evaluation chart pie. Later on, due to lack of time, we finished this moment with an introspection, using the fishbowl activity so participants could collectively think about how COVID-19 affected personally their lives, in which state they found themselves, what they thought nowadays was their normalcy and in which way they felt the methodologies, approaches and techniques shared during this program could make them live a better life.

Networking Chill Out Meeting

Closing farewell party and an official public moment, with several representatives from ETPM and the Moita municipality, with even the municipality Vice-President Sara Silva being present for this occasion. Each participant received their Youthpass certificates and celebrated together with the ETPM students.