Pre-departure Training… Or How to Become a Change Agent in One Week

The Engineers Without Borders (EWB) National Office team had planned an intense training session prior to the departure of the Junior Fellows. I met all of the Junior Fellows last January at the EWB’s National Conference in Ottawa, but only met up with half of them for my training. The other half had had their training session the week before and they were all gone for Ghana by the time we arrived to the training house in Toronto.

Training was absolutely wonderful, challenging and exhausting. We’re talking six long yet amazing days of workshops from about nine to nine. Our training session was a bit more diversified, in the sense that we were not all headed in the same direction. Eight francophones were heading to French West Africa, more specifically Burkina Faso and Mali. The other 12 were headed to Zambia and the Philippines.

For the first time in EWB history, the training sessions were held in French for the francophone group, thanks to a few incredible and daring trainers facilitating the workshops in their second language. No need to say we were all delighted, and this allowed for much more participation from the Quebecois. What a treat!

It’s rather difficult to summarize all our activities since our busy schedule allowed us to cover so much ground. Some highlights include presentations about our NGOs to our peers, a facilitation session with a nutrition theme, a live case study, a culture choc session, a session on impact, integration 101, individual one-on-one check-ins and check-outs with National Office staff, an Ethiopian dinner, lunch with country representatives, a photography lesson, the legendary late night Q&A session with the EWB CEOs, and the list goes on…

On the very last day of training there was a graduation session, where we were asked to share with the group our favorite moment of the week and one lesson learned. One of the many lessons I learned is that there are no good answers to international development problems, but that the best way to stay on track is to ask the right questions. My favorite moment was a combination of all the energizers we did throughout the week. We played games, sang songs and danced, were lead through a few yoga poses, made a human pyramid but one energizer out of them all was hard to beat. My heart was left pounding for the next few minutes, ridiculing the many doses of caffeine I took throughout the week that never really did the job anyways...

First I need to introduce George, who is co-CEO and co-founder of EWB. I also need to introduce Levi, who was an all-star trainer for the francophone group. So our young, small and daring Levi decides to show off his back flip. Impressive, I imagine, but I missed it because of a poorly timed bathroom break. I made it back on time to hear not-so-young, not-so-small but oh-so-daring George tell us about the front flips he used to do. I got a good laugh out of this, but before I knew it George had pushed some desks aside and was running for it. I thought he would stop, laugh, and tell us “I got you good, eh?”, but instead we all watched him jump in the air into a ball – and land on his bum! I am apparently still amused two weeks later.

Somehow I think that training week allowed me to relive Katimavik again over the course of a few days. And it was more than the numerous workshops and energizers that did it. Training sessions were held at the University of Toronto daily, but the small house where we stayed at night was a Katima-house at its best: four bunk beds crammed in each room, house rules, a shower schedule, stuff everywhere, no privacy… I loved every minute of it, probably because I had survived nine months of this and I knew it would take more than a few days to drive me crazy!