Getting Ambushed Into Rock Climbing: Volunteer Training Workshop| 3 min read
Jodi Yang, a long-term member of our CSR team describes the morning’s festivities:
The workshop started at 9am and ran until midday. Mr Peng Zhen彭振, a lecturer at China Youth University of Political Studies, was in charge of leading the workshop. It was interesting to see how he animated the morning through talks, idea sharing, activities and games. For me, the highlight was definitely the group activities: all volunteers were separated into two big groups and were faced with either a rock-climbing or a broken bridge crossing challenge.
I found myself indoor rock climbing with a group of young college students also attending the workshop. I didn’t make it to the top, but I did a much, much, better job than the last time I went climbing in Ritan Park. I think the reason for this was definitely the group of people cheering me on despite the fact that my body and even my fingertips were shaking!
Of all the team-building activities Mr Peng taught us, my favourite was called “Evolution”. Everyone started off as an egg with the aim of eventually become a human being. To become a human being, you had to go through four stages of transformation:
- Egg to Chick
- Chick to Chicken
- Chicken to Monkey
- Monkey to Human
To ‘evolve’, you had to seek out someone of the same species and challenge them to a game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’. If you won, you could advance to the next ‘level’, but if you lost,n you had to seek someone else of your species out and play again. By the end of the game, I had not quite managed to evolve to a human being but was very stuck in the monkey stage!
This is certainly a game we will be introducing to our interns during our team-building sessions!
At the end of the workshop, Mr Peng asked us to use a few word to describe how we felt about the day’s workshop. My words were:
“Break through, Challenges and Sore arms!”
Jayne, a fellow CSR member, very accurately described the morning as:
“Positive energy!”.
All in all, it was great to share this wonderful workshop with a group of young Chinese students who really showcased the good will and positive energy that exists in China when it comes to fighting for good causes.
