"Dear Me... You are going to Kenya!"

I spent last week in beautiful Bethany Hills, Ontario at our Me to We Leadership Centre for trips training. I was in a building with 40+ incredible, inspiring, and experienced peers and facilitators. I spent three days picking brains, gaining knowledge, and being challenged. The reality has smacked me in the face that in less than two months I will be traveling to a country I have never visited, facilitating with a person I have never met, and be responsible for the lives of 29 young people... Holy moly! I have learned what to do in extreme cases (life or death scenarios), how to deal with withdrawn youth, what to do if my co-facilitator falls ill or we don’t get along, etc.

During this training, I have tried really hard to challenge myself. Instead of just copying notes and participating in modules, I have tried to mentally put myself into the situations. How would I debrief that module? What would I do if I received a lot of push back from a kid? How would I keep calm if a participant is seriously injured or worse? What would I do if I found participants getting... well, touchy? All these questions flew through my head as I realized I couldn’t answer them. I realized I need self reflection. So that’s what I’m going to do. I am giving myself a set amount of time (not yet decided how long or when) which I will use to analyze myself. To pick apart my own brain... What are my strengths and weaknesses as a facilitator? What makes me tick? How do I handle stress? These are just a few of the key things I need to learn about myself, and be comfortable with, before I can facilitate with another person and expect them to be comfortable with me.

So here’s to new adventures and self reflection.

Cheers!
Bria

Oh and PS – HAMZA SURPRISED US ON DAY TWO... HE’S BACK! No big deal or anything :D

Dare To Dream

Last Friday I was given the opportunity to give an outreach speech to a community in Dunnville, Ontario that are part of the Dream program. Dream (designing routes to education and mentorship) is a mentoring organization that focuses on bettering the community through youth by providing them with academic, social, and financial support for secondary education. I was really excited to visit this community because it reminded me a lot of FAM for Change. At FAM, we focus on empowering youth from Brockton High School to make a difference in their own lives, make a difference in their community, and make a difference in the world. We do this by helping them with their school work, participating in campaigns like Halloween for Hunger, and teaching them about various worldly issues. At Dream, they also do these things through global literacy programs and events completely run by the youth.

This speech was a great opportunity for me in different ways. First, I was able to see an existing mentoring organization right here in Ontario, and one similar to FAM. It made me so happy (much like “Strip the Streets” did) to be able to see young people mentoring each other and putting on their own events. Secondly, I was able to speak to my own experiences with mentoring and virtually (via pictures) introduce the community of Dunnville to my mentor, Jonathan, and my mentees, Nichole and Angel. It gave me a great sense of pride to be able to express how important mentorship is and to see the pride in the kids’ faces when I asked, “who here has mentored someone?”

Every day this job presents new challenges. Every day this job presents new goals. Every day presents new dreams. And every day this job presents new feelings of accomplishment... Friday was one of those days.

Cheers!
Bria