Day ONE - Teamwork + Communication skills

(From left to right: a semi-group photo; a castle at the business centre; photo with delegates from Israel, Malaysia and Mauritius (? will check this...it is quite hard to remember everyone!)

First of all - sorry to those who messaged me because even though I was online, I only came back to my room at 2:22AM HK time so was too late to make a reply!

Ok - so what did I do today?

Well the forum officially started at 11am and there was a welcoming talk made by the British Council staff as well as the PM of UK - Mr. Gordon Brown (no he didn't come here, he made a video!) - he might be meeting us on Thursday actually - we'll see. Then we had two team games.








The first game was called "Build a Tower". Basically what we had to aim to build a tallest and most beautiful tower with colourful plastic straws (not too environmental friendly there but I'm sure they will be recycled :D) which can hold a golf ball. Our team's one was the tallest but then after an earthquake test (delibrate shaking of the table) - it collapsed (lucky none of us is thinking of doing architecture!). Anyway - the point of the game wasn't really to build the tallest and most beautiful tower- it was a means to reveal the difficulty with teamwork. Every team had to share one thing that they did well and one thing that they didn't and it was agreed that time management was a big problem and so as a result of the game - we learnt more about the key aspects of team-working.


The second game was that each team must come up with either a sculpture or a painting to show an obstacle that activists face when they are promoting their projects etc. The main point of the game was to emphasize on the importance of visual communication. Did you know that body language contributes 55% to communication? We were not allowed to use ANY words at all and we could only depend on our positioning, body language, facial expression and eye contact. Another aspect of the game was that we are now starting to take stuff out of our hearts and minds and actually taking them out and sharing with each other; meanwhile learning from each other.

Guess what we were trying to show! Answer on tomorrow's entry!

Both games were fun but we all learnt a lot as well - as you can probably tell.

Anyway - I'm off to dinner now, see you later!

P.S. Just an extra piece of information - the hotel is in a very nice location and the food is great!







(From top to bottom: lunch buffet; photo in front of the pond at the business centre; participants paying much attention)