SB’s Teambuilding Day
Beirut, Saida and Arsal joined forces for a rare full-team of SB OverSeas staff teambuilding day at the Awaly Park in Saida in the last weekend of July.
The day focused on building relationships, cooperation between the members of the staff, as well as to have fun together in a de-stressing way. We gathered amongst the trees blowing in the wind and the river slowly passing by, an environment in nature that sparks creativity and serenity.
The teambuilding day had the goal of building relationships across and within our centres, developing our awareness of each other’s strengths and about how to work with each other under stressful and challenging circumstances. Led by our resident psychologists and education coordinator, Eman, Diala and Karla, we engaged in a series of activities that tested our communication skills, flexed our ability to empathize with others and created a space for discussion on our strengths and weaknesses. While we started the day with the staff paired with their colleagues from the same centre, by the second activity the whole team was mixed between centres, taking advantage of a rare time to connect with their colleagues in a different city.
We started with the blindfold game where groups of two walk around a path navigated only by the instructions from their partner, each centre with the people that they trust the most doing something that maybe someone could entrust a nice stranger to do. As the activities went on, the level of trust needed to share and experience the activity together increased.The second activity mixed the centre staff together in order for each person to create a poster that represents them as an individual, using newspaper, glitter and other things found in the nature around us. We then each took turns presenting what we made, and a bit more about ourselves to the whole group.
The majority of the SB OverSeas staff in Lebanon are Syrians and therefore amongst what was shared were stories of success, but also of failure, of losing a family member, but also of gaining a family from the people at SB. In that moment of sharing, we were able to all feel connected in our passion for helping others and our drive to achieve our goals both personally, and for the work we do together.
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