DUF COURSE IN HASLEV

This blog post is written by Khouloud Samir

One of our first tasks as Youth Leaders were to be part of 12 days course arranged by DUF with Youth Leaders from other organisations. We were 4 Danes, 4 Ugandans and 2 Tunisians. To be honest I was not excited about it because we had only gotten a small briefing about the course so I thought that it was a regular course on how to do a project, how to do a workshop and how to work together but after finishing this course I can say that it was one of the best courses that I’ve had in my life.

The fact that all the participants lived together during the course and the good relationship between facilitators and participants created a safe space for all of us to share and to be ourselves. We had a great time together, we laughed and even cried together.

I think the best thing about the course is that it was learning by doing workshops, the facilitators made us do everything and try everything. They pushed us to stretch our comfort zone.

We had a class on gender because gender privilege/disadvantages exists anywhere in the world. We as facilitators and people in charge of projects and development always have to put on our gender glasses and see how we can make our activities and projects more equal.

When working with volunteers you have to consider why they are volunteering and how to keep them motivated. Volunteers are normally motivated either by a social aspect, the cause or the possibility to develop competences and skills.

Furthermore, we had a lot of sessions about collaborative group work and inclusive decision-making in which we learned different tools to use to make sure everyone gets included and have a chance to raise their voice. When talking and discussing, one should always verify to make sure that the messages you hear are the same as the message the person talking is sending.

All the youth leaders dancing an swahili song and dance

One of best workshops we had was the presentation workshop that we had with a woman called Alexandra. It was really an emotional day from the beginning. As a first step we did some exercises to practice different ways of talking and presentations skills that made us go out of our comfort zone. Then each one of us had 2 min to present something front of all the rest.

At that point I felt that is okay talking in front of the other participants because I had already shared a safe space with them. But after all I felt nervous to do it. In my 2 min I choose to talk about how using English to express my feelings is so difficult for me because sometimes I can’t find some words and even thought I’m good good at English I still going to think more about what to say because it's not my native language. All the feedbacks that I received was constructive.

Alexandra did a great job analyzing our weaknesses. At the check out session we all cried, it was really a very challenging and exciting day.

At the end all I want to say is that it was a really great experience from which I learned a lot personally and professionally. I meet very good and lovely people and I already miss it a lot.

Youth Leaders from Denmark, Uganda and Tunisia