As part of the Young European Federalists of Macedonia, I have spent the last 6 months contacting people who share the idea of a federalist future for Europe. The task has had its challenges – searching for enthusiastic, young individuals, each one an aspiring professional in one’s own field, while helping them discover or develop their federalist convictions. The final result was a group consisting of students from political studies, international relations, IT, architecture, law and medicine. At that point, we realized that the real challenge was how to work together (and not kill each other in the process).
With this on our minds, we happily joined a training organized by the Center for Intercultural Dialogue, together with the newly-established NGO KRIK. The basic training on the topic of Organizational Management was truly a much-needed breath of fresh air for all of us. Although both organizations were starting off with a completely new group of people, KRIK had very different goal and approach. The diversity in thought made the training even more valuable as many various approaches were suggested for the simplest dilemmas and questions.
A truly valuable facet of the training was the selection of experienced and patient trainers who never gave up on our simple, and perhaps naïve, inquiries. As newcomers to the field of civil work, it was comforting to be led through some of the key elements of maintaining a functional organization by people who have been working on similar issues for years. The training itself was structured with a very coherent and logical array of activities, starting with the abstract notion of overarching goals of an organization and ending with concrete proposals for activities and projects. Having built the link between the two, together with a couple of useful insights on internal communication techniques, I can comfortably claim we are much more prepared to start working in teams.