Project Philippines 2011: Tuesday 23rd August: Day 10

After having a late night work session, the leadership team was once again up for an early start, for the 7:30am working breakfast. This morning was devoted to subcommittee work, and we set about finalising and rehearsing agendas for the afternoon's leadership workshop taking place at Sci-High (CCNSHS). On the way to laminate nametags we stumbled upon none other than a shop selling mountain dew..... All you non-believers, here's proof i've not been going crazy..

Definitely Legit..

After a hearty and healthy (not at all hypertension related) lunch of KFC, we headed off to CCNSHS to set up the workshop. One of our co-leaders, Anton had got caught and fined for jaywalking, a term unfamiliar to us Brits.

Cab 1 is awesomeeeee!

Awesome paper creations the students had made

And so the workshop began; with an icebreaker, the ingenious 'human chair', followed by the bulk of the day's focus, Public Speaking, which consisted of a discussion between mentors and mentees about previous experiences and ideas of what makes a good public speaker, and a hilarious gameshow-themed skit devised and performed by none other than our beautiful children's subcommittee!

Vote for your "BEST PUBLIC SPEAKER!!"

LESS is indeed more. That was the motto which would hopefully prove useful in the next shocking exercise, 'Impromptu Public Speaking' where students were given 1 minute to prepare a given topic for a speech. Scary, and unexpected, but feedback was offered by their mentors and when the second bout of 'Impromptu Public Speaking' came about the students fared much more successfully.

Ziggy tries his hand at discussing: "Hot or Cold"

Onto the teambuilding component of the day. Students were blindfolded and led to the gymnasium in what can only be described as an exercise of trust (with some mentors relishing control!) and took part in a game known as "The Key to Success", an exercise that involves putting the mentees blindfolded into a 'maze' (which in reality has no exit) and helping the students realize that they can always ask for help.

Blindfolded students waiting to be led to their next destination...

...then attempting to escape the 'maze'

The final leadership activity of the day was "River Crossing", a game that involves a 'river' of mentee-loving piranhas, leadership mentors under threat from rabid pandas, and 3 pieces of cardboard, with the objective being to cross the river intact with all your team-mates (to save the leadership mentors). Some of the methods adopted proved amusing but in the end team 3 completely dominated and managed to reach the other riverbank well in advance of the others, by using some clever innovation and teamwork. Mentees picked up especially on the fact that there were several different possible solutions and approaches to the same problem.

Jessie keeps an eye out for industrial espionage..

...but team 3 push ahead!

The children's subcommittee then took over for the final hour, dedicated towards the hypertension portion of the project, with the mentees splitting into small groups and preparing a short presentation detailing an overview of hypertension - with a definition, the symptoms, the causes, and how to prevent it.

Hyper-what? ...Hypertension!!

The rest of the day was dedicated to more subcommittee work, the adult team coming up with a provisional plan for next weeks health fair, and the children's committee working on their hypertension pamphlet. Us leadership folks moved onto planning the next day's agenda and leadership workshop.

Dinner was at a buffet, with an opportunity to sample more of the local cuisine.. and the place also had entertainment in the form of a guitarist and singer belting out acoustic versions of all the latest tunes - Bruno Mars, J-Lo, Jessie J. Our resident minstrel Andrew had a go on the stage which was a smashing hit!