Day One in 2 parts - Part One

After the arrival of participants and first contact makings on Monday, the program of the Contact2Action seminar started on Tuesday in its full capacity. The City Hall of the picturesque French town Laguépie served as a venue of first consultations and group activities.

Participants on their way from the hosting centre to the City Hall where the working activities take place.

Our hosts suggested to begin in an informal atmosphere, by traditional games from participant’s respective countries. Following the good mood created this way, the participants were motivated to continue in a more serious tone.

Energizer activities to start the first day.

Victoria Lovelock, Director of CCIVS and Kristine Roke from Solidarités Jeunesses took the floor by welcoming the participants, introducing the rules for the following days and presenting the program of the seminar.

Although the program for the seminar was set, the facilitator team envisaged it as flexible and opened for participants’ propositions.

In order to get to know each other better and facilitate contact making, Valérie Mouton introduced a game giving away papers containing statements that had to be completed with corresponding names. This way the participants had to move around, asking each other questions and finding a person who corresponds to the descriptions.

Interactive games enabled participants to establish connections and know each other better.

After the facilitators introduced their expectations and goals for the project, they wanted to hear some brief feedback. The participants were therefore asked to write their motivations, expectations and seminar objectives on colorful pieces of paper. They could express their creativity by giving the paper a unique shape with a final goal to represent a ”seed” of their ideas. The ”seeds” were then put on the wall, in an imaginary garden of expectations, hopefully to grow with time as the conference passes.

Representatives had an opportunity to be creative when expressing their expectations from the seminar.

Simultaneously with the coffee break, we used our free time for a brief walk in the city in order to better know the surroundings.

Laguépie proved as a beautiful and welcoming environment for our deliberations.

In the meanwhile, the facilitators created a walking gallery of IVS movement history. After putting papers on the wall and connecting them so to create a timeline, the participants were invited to write some basic facts about their organisations and place them accordingly on the gallery.

The walking gallery was an interesting way to get better understanding of the historical development of participating organisations.

Passing from this general revision of IVS movement facts to a more concrete approach, the activities were followed by presentations of individual organisations. The program started with Victoria Lovelock from CCIVS, after which we had a chance to learn more about I-Dare, IPYL and JAVVA Belgium. The template was the same for all organisations. After a brief, 5-minute-long presentation, other participants had a chance to pose questions, in order to learn more and get a more interactive overview of participating organisations.

Victoria Lovelock presenting Coordinating Committee of International Voluntary Service (CCIVS).

”The Community” – photo taken during presentation of I-Dare for Sustainable Development appropriately represents the goals of the whole Contact 2 Participation project.