AFS India is happy to announce the successful completion of Process Training 2019. It was held in New Delhi on two consecutive weekends, whereby the sessions for the departments related to Sending, School, Hosting and Counseling was held from 18th to 20th May and the training sessions for sentio, volunteer and finance department took place from 24th to 26th of May. The training focused on providing exposure to various departmental processes as well as sharing the knowledge and best practices related to the respective departments among the participants. The staffers played the role of facilitators during the training. Overall, we selected 50 volunteers from PAN India, for being a part of this training.
The Process Training for the Sending and School programs was held on 18th to 19th May 2019. Volunteers from 14 Chapters were part of this process training. This training gave an opportunity to impart information for the upcoming cycle related to the process of sending and school programs. The Process Training introduced the participants to the statistical numbers and achievements of sending and school department in the last year. The training not only imparted a clarity on the flow of the process of programs related to sponsored and non sponsored sending but also addressed the challenges and brainstormed upon the solutions and sharing the benefits of being an alumni of AFS India.
The AFS India Process Training for Hosting and Counseling was held on 19th to 20th May 2019 at AFS India National Office. The Process Training had 17 eager volunteers ready to learn more about the Hosting Process. The discussions and interactions rounded around highlights of the previous year in Hosting, details and timeline of hosting cycle, expectations and setting the tone for the cycle to come. A major focus of the training was also laid upon empowering volunteers with the right tools for hosting support.
The Sentio Process Meet took place on 24th to 25th May 2019. It was attended by 8 committed volunteers. The meet witnessed some extensive brainstorming of how we can take the “18+ years” program a notch up in the year to come. The sessions included a deep dive into understanding the realm of 18+ Programs in India and its significance in the increasingly fast developing world. It also included extensive awareness building of Global Competence Certificate (GCC) which is a very effective independent intercultural learning tool for individuals from all walks of life. The cohort also conducted a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threats) analysis looking at the ground reality of implementation of 18+ programs in their chapters and further agreed upon some priority or focus areas to look at. The training concluded with re-visiting the expectations that were there in the beginning and ‘ticking them off’ while also setting expectations of the next steps.
The Process Meet for Volunteer Department also took place on 24th to 25th May 2019. A team of 6 dedicated volunteers pan India joined us in this training. The meeting had a lot of brainstorming sessions over the topics like understanding the volunteer journey, having engaging chapter meetings, handling the challenges according to the chapter realities, engagement and quality growth of volunteers, opportunities and recognition for the volunteers, new developments and periodical events, and volunteer & program growth. The participants looked very motivated and came up with different innovative ideas in terms of making the volunteering journey more efficient and interesting in their chapters.
Moreover, this time, the process training for the Finance Department was held through a zoom call on 24th May and 13 participants from pan India joined in this online training. The interaction focussed more on discussing the financial chart of 2019 along with addressing the queries and asking them feedback with regards to the same.
The facilitators also talked about the challenges that the finance department faces while handling the chapter finances and shared the best practices that should be adopted by the chapters in order to make the financial process more efficient. To make the participants brainstorm more about how the chapter finances should be, they were also given certain case studies and were asked to work upon the same.
The Process Training ended with empowering and educating the next generation of volunteers. Throughout the training, the staffers focussed on sharing ideas about processes and relevant concepts of intercultural learning. Overall the sessions were very interactive and fun-filled which made the understanding process easy for the attendees and hence they were able to take back a lot of clarity and in depth knowledge about the process that they’ll be looking after, in their chapters. We would like to thank all the volunteers.