Heart-Centered Leadership Foundation (HCLF) offers different activities for the youth with the goal of empowering them to discover who they are, what their abilities are and what they want to achieve. A way in which HCLF reaches this goal is with the support of the different pools of volunteers that help in different ways.
One of the pools of volunteers is the Heart-Centered Impact Coaches (HCIC), young adults who work closely with young persons during the activities of HCLF for the youth as peer coaches. Aside from workshops and training to prepare them in their role as volunteers, recently HCLF gave two sessions to improve their personal and professional capacity.
The first activity was a capacity building followed by a Mock Impact Café.
The volunteers expressed a need to continue developing their abilities to facilitate group projects, particularly how to deal with emotions and behavior of young persons. As a HCIC, the volunteer is required to have a positive attitude where they show compassion to support, listen and understand the young persons, which is not an easy task.
The role of HCIC also means that the volunteer sometimes also needs support to process their own emotions and feelings during and after the activities. For these two points, in HCIC’s evaluations there was interest expressed to receive more techniques to improve their abilities to guide group processes.
To accommodate the needs of HCICs, HCLF prepared the first Capacity Building training which consisted of two sessions. The first session was facilitated by Teodora Goloiu, a clinical psychologist specialized in cognitive therapy, individually and in groups. Mrs. Goloiu gave an interactive session on the topic of “how to manage emotions as a peer coach”. The second session was a presentation of Efraim Suurendok regarding the Code of Protection.
Mrs. Goloiu made an inventory of the concerns expressed by the volunteers and encouraged HCICs to think together about strategies that they can use to solve the challenges that they are experiencing.
To compliment the strategies that the volunteers came up with, Mrs. Goloiu gave tips and routines that the HCICs can use to process and regulate their emotions during and after an activity.
In the second session, Mr. Suurendonk presented the protocols that are used when child abuse is suspected. During the session, HCICs received brief information on how to notice signs that can indicate that a young person might be in a dangerous situation for themselves or another, and what are the appropriate steps that are taken to manage the circumstances professionally.
After the Capacity Building, a teambuilding was organized in the shape of a Mock Impact Café. Impact Café is a youth activity that HCLF offered to secondary school during the past year, where HCICs guide the process of conversation in a group setting. The Mock Impact Café acted as an opportunity for the volunteer HCICs refresh their knowledge and continue working on their ability to guide and assist group conversations, and practice how to make use of authentic empathy and active listening.
The Capacity Building and the Teambuilding Mock Impact Café session helped support volunteers in feeling stronger in their personal and professional abilities during various activities for the youth, among these, their Impact Cafés which recently were completed successfully.
If you are interested in learning how to begin the training trajectory as a volunteer to become a Heart-Centered Impact Coach, visit HCLF’s website, www.hclfaruba.org/hcic or send a WhatsApp message to (+297) 584 1211.
