EJWP2 began their adventure in the week of 11-15 January.
‘Exhausted, excited and happy’, sum up the feelings of EJWP2 participants late on Friday afternoon wrapping up their first (online) training week. These EJWP training weeks are based on the three pillars of the EJWP programme:
1) Knowledge sharing and creation
2) Networking
3) Personal Development.
Would you like to find out about the EJWP2 field trips, ambassadors they meet, and personal experiences they shared? Read further!
On Monday, we began with the Ambassadors’ programme and the alternative field trips.
Virtual field trips
To keep safe during the pandemic – which we hope will improve soon – we bring work places and local situations together online to share with each other. EJWP participants are tasked with creating a ‘field trip’ using our online collaboration tool, so they can better share their programme information within their own cultural reference.
Field trip participants experienced:
- A tarantula named Bernie, who belongs to Andres
- Neighbours of Manon in her apartment in Grenoble, France, who she identifies as: ‘the sporty family’, ‘the loud sneezing elderly man’ and ‘the fashion week couple’
- Merel’s chickens, that are her new ‘colleagues’ in her home office
- A lot of beautiful images of water. It was great to get more of a feeling than just from the view of our computer screens.
The collage of pictures above is from the participants’ personal field trips.
Ambassadors’ programme
This week also featured the Ambassadors’ programme as topic. During the warming-up in November, EJWP2 participants met Joachim D’Eugenio, on behalf of Veronica Manfredi, Director, European Commission DG Environment Quality of Life. And this week we met the other two ambassadors of the programme; Richard Elelman (EURECAT) and Marielle van der Zouwen (KWR). The result? Open doors to new contacts, mentors for careers, new practical perspectives, and new inspiration in their work.
And to make things even more interesting, participants were challenged to find and invite new ambassadors before the next training week. We are curious who they will select – and why! See our next newsletter to find out more about their invitations.
Personal Leadership
Our programme trainer, Jennifer Cronick, led sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday with coaching on personal leadership that reflected on: How well do we know ourselves? And do we lead ourselves?Participants explored topics including prioritization, reciprocity, communication effectiveness and personal development plans for the coming two years. Jennifer helped us determine: How do you write the message? What can the message influence? And how do you analyse and make the best of feedback?
New narratives for the value of water
The challenge over the next three months is to create engaging stories about the value of water.
How can we explain the value of water? What is the value of water? Gonzalo Delacámara (IMDEA) (read more: article last fall on his Masterclass) took EJWP2 on a fast tour through the topic before participants devised their own plans how to come up with a moving narrative in three months.
The group described their first project experience as inspiring, overwhelming and exciting, and indeed challenging. We consider this good results! Hopefully it helps that EJWP1 participants are working on the same challenge. The results will be presented in the spring of this year.