As part of a program of Leadership with CTI (The Coaches Training Institute) in which I participate, my colleague Céline and I have co-created and co-hosted the workshop “Move to change” for a group of 20 young students between 18 and 20 years in the professional sector. I share with you the happiness that gave me this wonderful day.

The idea of ​​offering this workshop grew out of a shared passion between Céline and me to ensure that our young people must be seen and heard and have their dreams become available. In a brainstorming session, we identified clearly that we wanted to spark the stars in our youth, inviting them to put into action as well as to equip them to improve their self-esteem, provide them with tools of life, highlight their talents and values, grow the desire to complete a project, a dream. We also aspire to create waves in this group make their experience a sense of pride, love, and trust.

Conquered by the idea of ​​our workshop, a person around us gives us on a silver platter, “her group of twenty-two students in aesthetics”. We accepted with great pleasure.  Preparations are well underway, Celine and I are confident and very thrilled.

The evening before the event, we had the chance to prepare the room for our workshop. It is in a very happy mood we orchestrated the creation of music, posters, small notebooks, photos, giant tapestries illustrating qualities, strengths, talents and values. We really wanted to inspire our group. In fact, their teacher had shared with us, the girls really felt very privileged to have been chosen.

The next morning at 9 am, our group enters the room. Girls are especially playful and curious to see how we “decorated” the space just for them. As a first activity, we provided them all a bag of Lego Serious Play – 60 blocks of different shapes and colours and have allocated 10 minutes to build a construction that would answer this question: Who are you? It was great to see how each individual was original to tell and share their story to the group, about their construction.  Each describing who she was : sharing their personality traits, qualities and also their weakness. Celine and I were reversed to see in the first “game/exercise”, that the group already saw themselves differently.

We subsequently followed up with a series of games to help them identify their strengths, talents, qualities and values ​​: improvisation theater, personification, post-it notes war, inspirational photos to spark their dreams. We also had rich discussion about prejudices, respect and trust. Our young students suddenly realize that each of them were so unique and special, with exceptional qualities and strengths.

Throughout the workshop, our young adults slowly filled their giant poster where we could see the progress:  their self-esteem increased . There were times when some were more vulnerable, sharing more intimate moments, and this has had an impact on the general empathy group – girls gently opened their heart.

Céline and I saw the stars in the eyes of most girls and for us, it was really what we were looking from the bottom of our heart. When the workshop ended, it was a privilege to see them gently go away with their treasure … the stars, self-esteem, dreams, confidence and a lot of love in their heart. They also answered our question at the end: if you had to summarize the workshop in three words, what would you say? Here are some answers that students have written us:

Inspiring, unique, rewarding, better-known liberator, moving, stimulating, motivating.

I warmly thank my colleague Céline, Chantal, the teacher of the group, ous assistants: Britta and Heidi and the school Director which has trusted and believed in this project.

Investing in our youth? Yes absolutely with your heart!

I invite you to leave your comments.

Christine Lecavalier