by Amy Potthast

What to Do When You’re Stuck in a Really Bad Workshop

With as much professional development training you get during your service term, it’s bound to happen, sooner or later.

Sometimes workshop facilitators, bless their hearts, fail.

Experts they may be, but their ability to convey their knowledge can fall flat if they aren’t well-versed in what their audience’s special needs are, if they appear arrogant, or if they are not experienced in front of a crowd.

In an attempt to be humorous— or to cover the topic in a way that even a child could grasp— a workshop presenter may even offend you. They may have grossly misrepresented the content of the workshop in its title and description. You may have missed some crucial piece of the bio that would have told you to stay far, far away.

As someone who facilitates workshops from time to time, and attends many, I’ve put together a cheat sheet with ideas for surviving a workshop that doesn’t meet with your expectations:

Keep an open mind; unless you are participating in a corps at mid-career, you may have a lot to learn —listen closely, follow up on references and resources mentioned during the workshop, and ask questions that help the facilitator make the workshops more relevant to you.

Workshop presenters usually try their best to help you discover relevant information, and they are probably not responsible if there’s a rule that forces you to be at the workshop. So cut them some slack.

If you find yourself in a workshop that really does need some improvement, be proactive (you might want to print this list out and keep it handy in your wallet — never know when you will need it):

If you notice that the rest of the crowd has also lost interest, or is about to start throwing tomatoes, attempt to be a good sport by raising your hand when invited to offer ideas, or to ask questions.
Make a game of it if you have to—it will keep you occupied.
Learn from negative examples—if certain workshop conventions bug you —say, the use of icebreakers—make a point never to employ those conventions during workshops you lead. If your facilitator is making wild assumptions about who is in the room, note the importance of researching the audience prior to your next speaking engagement.
Maintain your professionalism as much as you are able; resist the urge to write notes to your peers sitting near you. They may actually be getting something out of the workshop. (After the event ends, feel free to explore this very question with them.)
When you’ve reached the end of your rope, take a deep breath and try drawing a perfect circle. Really, try it.
Offer constructive feedback on evaluation forms; it really doesn’t help to adopt a nasty tone on these.
Approach workshop organizers about your concerns, after the event is over. Be kind.
Volunteer to share your knowledge by facilitating your own workshop at the next event, or to organize an Open Space session.

When a workshop doesn’t go well, and you paid for it either with money or time away from your service site, all you can do is try to salvage some joy. Even if it’s just the thrill of achieving a perfect circle with your pen.

This blog post has been adapted from a section of the forthcoming Service Corps Companion to the Idealist.org Guide to Nonprofit Careers, due out this coming spring from Idealist.org.

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02.07.09

by Amy Potthast

National Service as Paid Volunteering? Uh…No.

If you’ve been considering a term of national service, keep in mind some of the biggest differences between doing a year-long term of full-time service and serving as a community volunteer.

To the uninitiated, a term of national service can seem to be “paid volunteering” because participants earn a basic living allowance. However, real differences exist, and local communities throughout the United States feel the direct impact of those differences.

Community Volunteers

From Flickr user who.log.why

Community volunteers donate their time through a nonprofit or school. They improve their communities because they can extend the human resource capacity of the places where they volunteer.

The amount of time they donate is up to them, but it’s usually part time. Some volunteers join a service project for a few hours on a single day, achieve greatness, feel good, and move on.

An organization’s part-time, longer term community volunteers may help out on sustained projects, or they may tackle shorter tasks that change from day to day.

Finally, as long as their duties are within the bounds of labor laws, the specific assignments are between community volunteers and their supervisors. Community volunteer service rarely comes under strict scrutiny for effectiveness, sustainability, and performance measures the way national service corps member positions do.

In sum, in the United States millions of community volunteers collectively devote billions of hours of their time to causes they believe in. Their contributions to social services are crucial to the operation of most nonprofit organizations and schools. Most serve on a part-time basis, often while in school, gainfully employed, or retired.

National Service Corps Members

Full-time national service is different in that participants — often called members or corps members — really dedicate all their work-day time to their service. In fact in at least two programs, members cannot hold down any work outside of their service.

National service programs in the United States include AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps*VISTA, AmeriCorps*NCCC, Teach For America, City Year, and many, many others (see the list of Corps and Coalitions in the right-hand side bar of this blog) not all of which receive funds from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS).

CNCS funds—in part—most of these domestic service corps. It invests money through states, national organizations, and local communities, and that funding is leveraged through host service site matching contributions and other private donations.

Each service program is evaluated and approved at the state or federal government level before funding comes through and corps member recruitment begins. Grant proposals requesting funding for members must show performance outcomes, goals, and measurements. Corps members and their supervisors track the effectiveness of their service regularly, and supervisors write grant reports detailing corps member achievements.

Corps members initiate and lead hefty projects, on critical issues, like disaster preparedness and response, education, poverty, environment, and public safety.

Because corps members serve for a period of 10 to 12 months (or longer, if they commit to a second term) they have a chance to affect lasting, positive change in their organizations — through developing new programs, identifying and going after new sources of funding, and leveraging the efforts of millions of community volunteers.

Corps members also change their communities in permanent ways — by serving in schools, tutoring struggling kids throughout their term, consistently mentoring children of incarcerated parents, increasing the job skills of recent immigrants or high school dropouts, rebuilding communities in the wake of natural disasters, and creating access to affordable health care through local clinics and health organizations and more.

Finally national service is an investment in the corps members themselves, developing the future of public service leadership in the United States. National service corps members receive hours of targeted technical skill-building training throughout their terms. Two-thirds of AmeriCorps members followed in a longitudinal study go on to public service careers. The Eli Segal AmeriCorps Education Award has made further education possible for thousands of alumni.

The achievements of community volunteers are many and great. The service of AmeriCorps members is closer to the equivalent of the federal government offering human resource grants to local communities to contribute in crucial capacities. It’s not paid volunteering.

Check out Tim’s post on Change/Wire, which also features video testimonials of service corps participants talk about their achievements.

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02.07.09

by Amy Potthast

Senate Stimulus Deal Preserves National Service Funding

Update 2/11: Senate passed their version of the stimulus with national service funding intact. Check out this post with the details.

According to CNN’s list of “what got cut” from the Senate’s compromise version of the stimulus package, national service funding to the Corporation for National and Community Service has been preserved.

Lawmakers vote on Tuesday on the compromise American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Between now and then, of course, more cuts may be made to the proposed legislation — including cuts to additional national service funding.

See details on how national service faired in the House version that passed last week.

In the Senate’s version, billions were cut, but not the $160 million dollars proposed to fund 16,000 additional “stimulus” AmeriCorps members. Some senators had questioned the funding and included it in a list of “wasteful” items in the proposed package.

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02.05.09

by Amy Potthast

Google Blog Post about the Idealist Global Volunteer Event

Google’s Public Policy blog featured the Idealist Global Volunteering Fair which Google hosted Tuesday night in Washington, DC.

Check out other fairs this week in New York tonight and Boston on Saturday.

The event Tuesday night drew a crowd of 650 prospective volunteers.

During the fair were three back-to-back workshops: International Volunteerism 101, Google Tools for Volunteers, and Affordable Volunteering Abroad.

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02.05.09

by Amy Potthast

Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme

Program brings people to Japan for up to five years of teaching, in rural and urban settings.

From the JET web site

Sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a way to increase mutual understanding among people of Japan and people of other countries, the goal Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET)is to internationalize local Japanese communities by inviting and involving foreign teachers.

Unlike most service programs I write about on this blog, JET participation is considered contract employment between program participants and the schools where they teach — JET teachers’s airfare to and from Japan is covered, and they earn a salary.

Similar to a service corps, JET participants form a network for support throughout Japan — and throughout the world as JET Alumni.

Also similar to a service corps, the JET participant’s role does not end when the work day ends — they are meant to be cultural ambassadors who have an impact in the community beyond the classroom.

JET recruits teachers from around the world. Applications to the JET Programme are made through the Japanese Embassy in your country; find yours.

Eligibility for the program includes qualities as varied as an interest in Japan, and good diction in your native language (for teaching purposes).

Today, the Idealist.org Global Volunteering Fair takes place in New York, at Barnard College. Check out the fair Saturday in Boston. In honor of the fairs, The New Service blog will feature international service programs all week!

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