18 new Radical Collaboration® trainers in the euforia community and new trainings coming up soon!

We are happy to have a bunch of freshly certified Radical Collaboration®  trainers in our community and to offer the first trainings in and around Switzerland. Together with our Chief Euphoric Officer Chantal, who became a trainer one year ago, we are now 19 trainers – the only ones in Switzerland!

Jim Tamm, the creator of the Radical Collaboration® methodology, and the psychologist and Radical Collaboration® trainer Malou Laureys facilitated the seven-day Trainer Certification course for 18 euforians in Geneva. The course was a deep-dive into the topic with a lot of space for reflections and discussions. The two trainers gave a great example on how radically collaborating creates an atmosphere where people complement each other and can flexibly come up with new solutions. Jim and Malou were happy to have the chance to train Radical Collaboration® trainers in a new country and to open up opportunities for a new group of young participants.

The aim of euforians to become certified trainers is to create more training opportunities for people within and from outside of the community. From now on Radical Collaboration® trainings will be offered regularly. Check out the next trainings:

March 24th to 26th
(only 2 spots left!)

March 31st to April 2nd
(12 spots available)

More trainings will come up in May and in Summer. You will find more information soon in our calendar. If you would like to book a training for your organization, get in touch with us!

What contains the three-day Radical Collaboration® training?
The three-day, highly interactive Radical Collaboration training is designed to teach people five very practical and immediately useful skills essential to building collaborative relationships between individuals and within teams and organizations. It is appropriate for anyone whose circumstances have the potential for disharmony, misunderstandings and conflict, and who would like to improve their effectiveness. It is also particularly helpful for individuals responsible for creating more collaborative environments within a team or organization. It provides participants with step by step tools how to initiate, lead and reach closure in negotiations and how to build successful long-term relationships.

KICK-OFF: Social Impact Award Switzerland 2017

Toujours eu envie de changer le monde ? Vous avez une solution à un défi social et/ou environemental ? Prêt à expérimenter l'entrepreneuriat ?

Que vous soyez étudiants, jeunes diplômés ou professionnels, rejoignez-nous pour découvrir le concours et explorer toutes les possibilités qui s'offrent à vous !

Au programme:

• Une conférence interactive où vous découvrirez le concours et le rôle de l'entrepreneuriat sociale dans notre société.
• 3 ateliers participatifs: bost your potential par euforia, générer des idées innovatrices par Impact Hub Geneva et échanger avec des jeunes entrepreneurs à succès: Share a Dream et The Fair Traveller (gagnants SIA Suisse 2015).
• Et pour finir: un cocktail pour votre permettre d’échanger avec d’anciens participants, networker ou tout simplement discuter autour d’un verre.

>>> March 7th 2017, 18h — Evénemen t bilingue : français et anglais.

Qu'es-ce le Social Impact Award (SIA)? Le SIA est l'un des programmes les plus importants pour la conception et le développement des entreprises sociales en Europe. Il est destiné aux jeunes qui souhaitent réaliser leurs propres projets et ainsi changer le monde. Le programme sensibilisera les jeunes à l’entrepreneuriat par le biais d’ateliers, puis mettra en compétition les idées les plus prometteuses pour gagner un cursus d’incubation de trois mois ainsi qu’un coup de pouce financier.

Registration here.
Facebook event here.

Cat’s Cradle - The first euforia Unleash weekend in Bern

Katalin from unMonastery is engaged as part of the host team to organize the first workshop cycle of the unleash project.

“The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well in each other’s thick presence” — Donna Haraway: Staying With The Trouble

Image source: blog.rowleygallery.co.uk/cats-cradle-1/

According to the dictionary, Cat’s Cradle is a collaborative game played with strings by two or more people. During the game complex patterns are formed. Each person needs to focus on the collective effort as they take over and complicate their partner’s configuration.

Playing together requires many skills beyond the rules of the game. According to the author of Radical Collaboration, Jimm Tamm, the five principles of collaboration are:

Radical Collaboration ©

Interestingly, 4 out of the five principles refer to feelings rather than intellectual capacity. It seems to be the case that to be able to work together better, a personal journey to deal with unresolved feelings, vague fears, inarticulated needs and hidden assumptions is necessary.

I have to admit, I am not comfortable with the term, personal well-being, and the army of self-help books that teach tricks on how to solve problems within oneself. There seems to be a whole new level of consumerism directed to feelings, as if now that the world has become nearly uninhabitable both on a physical and an emotional level thanks to unsustainable practices of production and consumption, we are now offered the opportunity to spend yet more money and time on learning ways to be able to deal with this devastation.

However, having worked with various groups in the last years, and seen beautiful projects go astray due to personal conflicts, lack of communication, and an inability to move beyond personal defensive attitudes instead of moving forward together, it seems inevitable that personally taking responsibility for one’s own inner universe is absolutely necessary in order to work together in new forms of organisations such as Teal or Open Organisation.

It is therefore not a coincidence that I found the first weekend of the Unleash program by euforia focused on personal wellbeing not only interesting but quite useful. We learned a wide range of different methods enabling us to engage with and accept our own fears, aspirations and vulnerability, and use these insightful strategies also to relate to each other.

For a weekend focused on the individual, most of the workshops required team work and in-depth conversation with one another. It provided an opportunity to get to know each other beyond the visible roles we each play in that particular community. The only thing the various techniques required us was to be truly present for ourselves, and for the others, not as experts, problem solvers, critics, defenders, judges or protectors, simply “as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.”

The unleash project: “It’s a bit like finding a watering hole in the desert”

Katalin from unMonastery participated at the kick-off of our new program the unleash project and is now engaged as part of the host team to organize the whole workshop cycle. In the following she shares her experience with euforia and the program.

You may not have heard about the unleash project, but you probably heard about euforia. And even if you have never heard of euforia, you have probably encountered the conundrum of work: a staggering number of people are unhappy in their working lives, while volunteering and activism is changing the way how the world deals with crisis situations - just think of the refugee crisis in Europe. In particular, young people are eager to engage and work very hard for causes they believe in. At the same time, Millenials are famously difficult to integrate into traditional workplace environments. the unleash project is offering solutions both for companies struggling with reinventing themselves in order to accommodate this new, extremely valuable human resource, and for people who are young or young at heart, finding it difficult to enter a hierarchical, competition-based, achievement-oriented workplace that does not offer purpose and satisfaction on a personal level.

The first meeting of the unleash project took place November 25-27, 2016, in Bern. Attending any Euforia event is a bit like finding a watering hole in the desert - familiar and unfamiliar characters come together to share their experiences and questions in a unique and nurturing environment. Workshops are designed to facilitate people with differing learning styles; delicious food and brief energising and meditation sessions break up the day, to nurture body and mind while learning; participants are encouraged to actively participate and share their own concerns and solutions to any given problem. Tools from The Art of Hosting are applied, including circles, world cafe, and other tricks, to maximise integration and collaboration. You meet highly successful business professionals, activists, artists, social innovators, students, freshly graduated young people searching for a better working environment, the employed and the unemployed, refugees, post-graduates. The overarching connection is the sense of community and shared values. It is a truly magical experience.

The unleash project will continue - if you missed the Kickoff, you can still sign up and participate in the rest of the events cycle. You can step into the cycle at any point, since it restarts in May 2017 as the current series come to an end.

Upcoming events:
20 - 21 January 2017: Personal Level: Focus, Mindfulness and Wholeness
Impact Hub, Bern

3 - 4 February 2017: Team Level: Creating a collaborative working environment, Share & Grow Night
Geneva

10 - 11 March 2017: Institutional and Societal Level: SDGs and Impact Initiatives, Share & Grow Night
Impact Hub, Bern

12 - 13 May 2017: Debriefing
Wylerringstrasse 36, Bern (Innovationsdorf)

Reinvening euforia: reflection day

Reinventing euforia: Come to the euforic reflection day and let's tap into all our potential - 11 December 10h-18h / 20.15h - Bern

euforia is all of us, partners, volunteers, staff, boosters alike. It's the changes all of us have co-created and experienced thanks to our involvement!
We have collectively felt many signals that it's time to completely reinvent euforia's form of organisation. For impact, wellbeing, sustainability and awesomeness (for us individually collectively and the world)!

What has happened so far:
If you have followed past announcements, you know that we have started our reinventing journey by re-imagining our values, purpose and principles.

What will happen now:
For the next stage, we invite you very warmly to Bern on 11 Dec in order to think further:

10h - 18h- for everybody
What is needed to unleash yours and euforia’s potential to get to our stars (Values, Purpose, Principles)?  
How can we tap into all the potential that is within us, all the resources that are both within us, between us and in our relations?

18.15 - 20.15h - for euforia ex-volunteers, etplers and experts in any domain
Would you like to be part of the support structure of our new transformative, collaborative, self-managed programmes The Unleash Project/Rev Lab?
Come and discover the new programmes, the structure inspired by holacracy/teal and the support roles YOU could fill to help teams & programme flourish!

Let's dream together, use all our sensing & imagination in a fun and reflective day!

You are important! Come and sign up here!

Hugs from and to all!

This was STEP into Action Geneva 2016!

Winter is coming... Mais ce n'est pas la bise glacée qui empêche les élèves du postobligatoire genevois de bouillonner d'idées !

Les 14 et 15 novembre derniers a eu lieu la 3ème édition de step into action à Palexpo (Genève). 1200 jeunes sont passés par les phases de sensibilisation, réflexion et action sur les thèmes de l'environnement, des droits humains, de la solidarité, de la migration, et pour la première
fois, de l'économie sociale et solidaire. Les 60 bénévoles de step into action étaient au taquet pour motiver des élèves parfois engourdis (par le froid, par la routine, par le pessimisme...) avec du fun, des idées et de la musique. A la fin de chaque vague, ce sont des jeunes éveillés et satisfaits du parcours qui repartaient avec leur action kit trop stylé que vous pouvez désormais « spotter » dans tout Genève !

Deux semaines plus tard – car il n'a pas fallu attendre bien longtemps avant que les plus vifs ne se manifestent ! – une dizaine de projets a émergé dans le cadre de la phase de suivi Boost Your School. Cette dernière incite les élèves à créer un projet qu'ils peuvent appliquer dans leur école au
cours de l'année scolaire. Soutien pour les migrants, recyclage, récupération d'invendus pour les sans-abris, collecte des pièces de 5 centimes pour les enfants malades, énergie renouvelable... Voilà ce que la nouvelle génération de changemakers veut offrir.

Winter is here. Il n'a qu'à bien se tenir... Change is coming.

Pictures and videos coming soon! Here the first impressions.

STEP into Action 2016 in the media:
Tribune de Genève
One FM
léman bleu
 

Connection Zero Field Zürich

>>> Invitation by euforia and 7sky.life

The 7sky.life Connection ‘Zero Field’ is going to enchant the Kaufleuten Zurich, Monday, 28th November 2016, at 20.00h! Doors open at 19.30, 22.30 end of the conference.

Why you shouldn't miss this event?

Because on that evening in the Kaufleuten will be told, what’s life really about, and YOU’RE MOST WELCOMED TO JOIN!

Short, exciting interventions of people who have gone to the bottom of the question of their essence are going to share their answers generously with our audience.

DIETER BROERS is a gifted bio-physician, author and life artist. He himself developed 100 patents for healing and free energy, proving scientifically where we stand with our earth today, and what our great chances are to live right now!

VERA BRANDES, worked for a long time in the music industry, before she devoted herself 100% to the healing of the people through music medicine. Her scientific research results go under the skin and the success against depression, sleep disorders, and body curings through music are resounding!

We are speaking of a VINCENT MUNIER, an extraordinary photographer out of France, who shows us the world through his photographs and encounters with animals from the most lost corners of our world, from where man has forgotten to live. Get ready for of a proper dose of nostalgia and a deep dive into your innermost self.

Furthermore, MERCY SHIPS presents us the grace they are experiencing each time when their doctors and nurses bring back to life patients through their attention, love and surgeries. People,living in the shadow of their villages, who are often excluded from their communities due to their fearful tumours,

NICOLAS MÜLLER has always been a snowboarding idol. Ever since, he has lived the life he always wanted, and has become a fantastic model for a whole generation of young people. Fruition reflects his authentic career, and at the same time the generation Y!

BAPTISTE DELALAY has been linked to the wheelchair for five years, but he has such a presence and radiates such a love that we believe him when he says that his accident had to be, so that he can help bring the the beauty of people who appear to be different into daylight!

FABRICE LECLERC is an ethical innovator. He says that the secret of all change is not to focus all our energies on fostering the old, but to build a positive ‘new’ for all. Fabrice worked with Steve Jobs for 4 years, and advises large corporations and companies on ethical and sustainable questions.

Our enchanting AURELIA is going to accompany us with her partner RICHARD at the piano throughout the evening… When she sings, time stops, and she offers us her whole being! … Aurélia is pure magic and beauty in person!

The evening goes on with DJG96 …

In collaboration with our highly esteemed partners: Swisscom, Henniez, euforia, wemakeit, NiceFuture, Discover Earth, Impact Hub Zurich.

Sign in HERE.

“I truly experienced the power of purpose”

Two weeks ago, we had the chance to hold two workshops at the International Session of the European Youth Parliament in Laax: the so called “Forum Event” with a World Café for 300 young people from all over Europe and a 2 hours imp!act workshop with 30 participants. Moreover, we presented our programs at the “Ideas, Opportunity, Impact Fair (IOIF)”, together with other NGOs and organizations. Mahaut was part of the amazing organizing team and shares her personal insights on this 2-days-journey we did together.

I joined Laax 2016, because every time I thought about this International Session of EYP, my heart started beating faster. I deeply felt inside of me that I had to be part of this. That something in me was connected to it. With a mixture of chance, passion and will, I started working with euforia on the projects of the Forum Event, the IOIF and the imp!act Workshop.

I spent so many hours thinking about my personal purpose. I spent so many hours asking myself the question: Why do I want to put so much effort in it? I spent so many hours on skype, trying to link our purpose with the complicated reality.

One of my main goals for the event was to help participants answer the question: What do you truly care about?

During the imp!act workshop, we had the opportunity to think about our passions, our values and our strengths. We went deep into ourselves and discovered in each other much more than any of us thought was possible. I cannot express how privileged I feel for having shared a magical moment with all participants during that workshop.

When details get into the way of the things you truly believe in, everything seems impossible. But as we have seen at the imp!act workshop with the challenge “Mission Impossible” and as our head-organizer Nora cited Nelson Mandela during her beautiful speech: “It always seems impossible until it is done.”

And for me, now it is done. The Forum Event went incredibly well. The IOIF was a success. The imp!act Workshop was a sublime moment.

It is difficult to express my feelings now, after the event. A mixture of pride, relief and incredulity. For the past weeks, I truly experienced the power of purpose. Of will. Of listening. Of finding what you truly care about and giving it all you have.

I hope that we all find our own purpose. That we take the time to reflect on the issues that deeply move us. That we dare to go beyond theoretical discussions and that we start acting.

Mahaut, 18, from Geneva