I’m all masked up and ready to board the early morning plane to Milan with an overlay in Amsterdam. This is the first time in my conscious life that I´ve travelled by plane (I´ve been on a plane at 3-4 years old but remember nothing about that). Whenever I have travelled before, I´ve done it by land or water. And I really considered doing it this time as well but It just seemed to be quite difficult during the pandemic.
I arrived in Ventimiglia in the evening just before it started getting dark. From there I had another 20 minute ride to Torri Superiore, the ecovillage hosting the training. At the bus stop the first meetings with co-trainees took place. There were 9-10 of us.
In a short moment a tiny bus arrived and around 25 people tried to fit into it. The bus driver yelled that everybody without the bus ticket should leave at once. The locals said: ”We haven’t paid for the bus before and we’re not gonna start doing it now.” Then the driver sat crossed arms in his chair and fumed at people that he is not going to drive a bus that is so tightly packed. In a moment he called his boss and presumably was ordered to drive, since that’s exactly what happened after he hung up. This was an exciting all-Italian moment, or at least what I imagined Italy to be like.
After the shakiest ride in a bus that was loudly making ”I’m gonna soon break in two” noises, we arrived. I was very surprised, because for the past 20 minutes I had already accepted that this will be how the whole story ends for me and I’m at peace- at least I made it to Italy!
Italian stereotypes aside, because there were many of those on the road and in the village, I attended one of the most profound trainings as of yet. I’ve attended many trainings before, most of them in my home country. A few in foreign countries, but this training really stood out for me.
It was the people and their depth and desire to evolve, it was the trainers absolute respect for their role and competence in the subject, it was the Torri Superiore ecovillage people doing all they could to make the stay superb, it was the air in a valley between mountains, it was the abundance of sun and fruits of nature and this time of year, it was the fact that such an important training took place during pandemic and climate crisis.
 | People had various different reasons why they attended the training. I personally felt that I really needed to become more competent working with young people as I realized during the summer when I was working with youth, that there are things I need to evolve in. And so, I came in there to be a true nerd. To attend full time, to take in as much as possible. And I did. And realized by the end that I really need to go even deeper into the subject. I can’t just stop here- there is so much more I need to realise. On a very practical level the training was built in 2 parts. The first part was where we were given many facilitation tools through lectures, practises, games. The first days we were sorting out the energies in the room for ourselves, we were discussing what makes a good leader, we learned about social rank and art of facilitation. Then we went into creating working groups and were preparing our own facilitated workshops. And the second part consisted of us carrying out the prepared workshops and getting feedback on how they went. |
Like I mentioned before, I now know so much that I don’t know yet, that I feel a pull towards learning a lot more in the field. I am keeping my eye on Erasmus+ trainings that I could attend to take the topic to a next level and also I’m doing my own deep dive into the topic through readily available resources.
I am extremely grateful to everybody who made this possible for me! And recommend the training (if they´re gonna do a next one like that) to anyone working with people.
Anna
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