Learning to Facilitate: A Training in Berlin

On Tuesday evening I arrived at the venue, the youth centre Kubiz in Berlin. A lot of participants arrived late due to major train delays so we just had dinner and one short introduction round before going to bed. On Wednesday we started the day with some games to get to know each other better and by making the group agreement. After the lunchbreak we discussed topics centred around learning methods and took pictures in groups to help explain the topics. Our topic was the different types of education and among others we used stairs to symbolise hierarchy. Other topics included theories on the ideal study amount and duration and how to get knowledge into long term memory. After that we had a session on group dynamics where we learned about the different phases most groups go through before becoming a consolidated group. We then portrayed hypothetical situations representing these different group dynamics in the form of theatre and changed the play slightly to improve the group dynamics between the characters in the play. On Thursday we started off with an outside activity on group coordination where some of us got blindfolded and the two people who did not have their eyes covered had to lead the blindfolded group safely through the garden and past obstacles. All of us got the chance to experience both roles which was a really fun and interesting experience. This was followed up by a reflection on the activity. The next session was on power as a facilitator where we picked different quotes and sentences talking about different forms of power and discussed in groups how our quotes relate to each other and occur in the context of volunteering and facilitation. After lunch we discussed discrimination, first in an academic way by learning about a theory around the topic then by discussing different topics relating to discrimination in groups. In the evening many of us went to a beer garden next to the nearby lake. On Friday we started off the day by getting a behind the scenes view of what its like to be facilitators. We were explained the reasons behind the room setup, how budgeting and planning works and which materials were used. In the afternoon we discussed 13 real life situations centred around challenging topics like discrimination, illness, harassment and sensitive mental health conversations that our trainers experienced at projects. The afternoon was free for us to explore Berlin. Since I was super tired and needed some alone time, I decided to go to Alexanderplatz, one of the central squares in Berlin, to walk around for a bit. I saw the TV tower, the red town hall, the Berlin cathedral and museum island. After 1.5 hours, I decided to have dinner in a traditional German restaurant and then went back to the Kubiz to relax and go to bed early. Our first session on Saturday was facilitation in times of crisis where we discussed the current global challenges and learned about Gramsci’s theory of revolution. For the second session we used our bodies to represent the physical and emotional labour of care work in order to become more aware of its importance. The afternoon was reserved for an open space session where all of us go the chance to facilitate our own sessions on a topic of our interest and share knowledge or initiate discussions and reflections. The topics were varied and included creative

writing, reflections on grief and prostitution. On Sunday, our final day of training we started the day by learning about visual facilitation methods. We were shown a number of different ways to draw people and icons that we can use to make flip charts. Even though I am not a creative person at all it was really fun to draw a bit and unwind. After this session we discussed facilitation as a job and got to ask the trainers questions including how they got started, finances etc. We then had the chance to think of workshops and projects we would like to facilitate in the future and share our ideas with others so those interesting in supporting our plans can sign up and we can contact them in the future should the project be put into practice. To finish off the day we did a feedback and reflection session on the week and then started tidying up the venue. In the evening a participant form Albania did tarot card reading for the entire group and we played some games together. On Monday morning we finished up the cleaning and then after saying goodbye to the trainers a group of 8 of us went to a cute café in Berlin. One of the girls and me also strolled through rainy Berlin for another 1.5 hours before heading to the train station and travelling back home.