So, we finally got to meet the rest of our beautiful and exotic Oxjam Regional Managers. We were joined in the exclusive YHA in London by people from as far afield as and the Isle of Wight!
Most people arrived on the Friday night for a few quiet ones in the hostel bar and the pub around the corner. The team bonding was a bit too succesful and for a handful (who shall remain nameless) the “few” turned into double figures before closing time. The more sensible among us got an early night, only to be awakened by the fire alarm at 2am…I wonder who that was..hmm??
We picked up with a nice early breakfast (8.45 on the dot) to begin training at 9.30. Much the same as the last session we covered Oxfam, Oxjam, and then were really lucky to be joined by Mary Saunders (an Oxfam shop manager) who had been on an exposure tour to Bangladesh, and had some pretty inspiring pictures and stories to tell us about.
Oh, I didn’t mention that our projector broke first thing and Benny (the man legend!) got his daily excerise by running around to local currys superstores looking for replacement bulbs, but to no avail.
We then had a quick workshop about how you generate and maintain a good team environment, with some really useful outputs. We identified that keeping your team meetings regular and creating a good social environment are some of the most important things keeping your team together/
Claire then led an interactive session on how to recruit event organisers. The groups came away with a solid, practical plan on how to recruit Oxjam music event organisers in their areas.
One of the great things about these sessions is just the great diversity of people who come to them, which such a huge spectrum of experiences and skills. It was great to see people thinking about the same problems in completely different ways, and one of our challenges is going to be making sure that all this learning and experienced is shared within the volunteer network.
We finished a little late at about 6pm for a quick departure to brick lane to go get a curry innit.
I can’t speak for everyone else but mine was amazing – Brick lane is so cheap and cheerful, you can a feast for a tiny Oxfam price (we negotiated a discount too of course!)
Off to the ten bells for a couple of drinks and then the brave went onto Cargo, and the tired and small of pocket change (led by me of course) went for a couple more drinks before trying to flag a taxi down for 45 mins ( I can’t do London). If anyone else cares to tell us more about what happened at Cargo then please do divulge…I heard that it was good : )
On Sunday there were a few hangovers, but nothing serious to get in the way of 2 HOURS OF TEAM ROLEPLAY yeah! In this we were planning how the Regional managers are going to work with their teams to put on launch events in their teams. We covered planning, budgeting and roles and responsibilities. And that was pretty much it before we dished out the Oxjam goodies and took this beautiful team photo. Ahhh memories.
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/27485296@N08/2867575829/” title=”the team! by m_ed_ic, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3218/2867575829_39dfc27bc9_b.jpg” width=”1024″ height=”768″ alt=”the team!” /></a>
Tags: Oxjam
