on June 28, 2023
Workshops! A word which is quite polarizing. It either excites one to ‘break away’ from the everyday demands of one’s work and invest in oneself and advance their skillset…
Or it frustrates one to sit through a presentation, perceived of little to no value, when they could be using that time to efficiently plow through their workload…
The ‘Ideal’ Workshop Formula
Here at The Connect Group we understand both perspectives which leads us to offering a third and more unifying perspectives…
Workshops can be so beneficial if they are informed by the context & needs of the community that they aim to serve. Context includes factors like timing, length of workshop, facilitators, venue, capacity compared to work load etc., whilst needs refer to the topics of interest which participants feel will practically add value and aid their day to day experience of work, school, family, finances etc..
Practicing the above, our workshops are informed by the participants through preliminary ‘focus’ groups administered online a Google Form with questions helping us define a workshop proposal that is truly beneficial and relevant to your community.
The right content without effective delivery is null-en-void. And so our team is intentional about presenting in a diversity of exciting ways including: film, music, games, guest speakers, panel discussions, journaling, art, debate and group work.
We also understand that a good cup of coffee, snacks and regular breaks enhance focus and allow for informal learning and networking too. As such all of our proposals include regular breaks and emphasize the importance of food & drink either provided by us or in-sourced elsewhere.
The result is a workshop with maximum attendance, engagement and benefit to both participants and the organization as a whole!
Post-Program Feedback
To conclude our workshop process with your organization, evaluation forms are completed or an evaluative conversation is hosted at the end of the final session, to ensure the impact of the workshop is expressed and measured. This feedback is reported to the organization with recommended next steps to sustain the progress from the workshop. This feedback also affords us an opportunity to improve too!
Our Offerings
As social workers, our scope of workshop offerings include:
- Communication & Mediation
- Life Skills for Pre-Teens, Teens & Adults
- Trauma Informed Care & Practice
- Psycho-Social First Aid & Basic Counselling Skills
- Positive Parenting & Discipline
- Afrocentric Psychology
- Psychosocial Developmental Stages
- Religious Intersectionality’s (e.g.: Faith & Sexuality)
- Diversity & Inclusion Think-Tanks, Policy Reformation & Implementation
- Mental Health Care
- The Law as it relates to: The Mental Health Act, The Children’s Act, Divorce & Maintenance and Gender Based Violence
Recent Workshop Success Stories
We recently finished an 8 week Sex Ed Curriculum for high school students at a local boarding school. The workshop ended with each teen receiving a ‘white rose’. The rose represented the beauty, potential and worthiness of each learner whom received it. The rose giving ceremony re-enforced the closing message; that sex experienced should be out of a place of worthiness, an expression of beauty and should further ones potential, not inhibit it.
Since the closure of this program we have received feedback from the school of learners dry pressing their roses and keeping them in diaries and memory boxes serving as an active reminder of the lessons learnt about positive & safe sex.
Trauma informed care helps lay persons effectively understand the impacts of trauma, and help a traumatized person re-regulate, allowing for prefrontal cortex functioning like learning, remembering and communicating. In delivering this workshop to the Shine Organisation in 2022, individuals left feeling empowered to help their students regulate so they could effectively learn to read and write. Additionally, participants also expressed how they felt they understood their own trauma and had tools to manage it and avoid it spilling out into their parenting, romantic relationships and professions too.
Another Trauma-Informed Workshop at a local school, had staff mimicking the ‘hand brain model- a hand motion depicting the process of re-regulation- just having this practical hand gesture allowed for a complex process to be explained and experienced in easy to understand and childlike terms.
Below are some pictures from some recent workshops we have run!
Book Now:
Keen to book a workshop with us?
You can do so via email (admin@theconnectgroup.co.za) or through our NPO partner, The LifeMatters Foundation with whom we are able to offer reduced rates for workshops through their social enterprise workshopping model: https://lifemattersfoundation.org/programmes/lifeskills-portfolio/teenage-awareness