DAY 1 of the Retreat

How do you organize a three day retreat for a faith based, mission driven organization in a Latin American country with a staff of over 80 people - who have never met as a group before? The answer - very carefully!

Day one of the retreat - The morning started with around 65 people, and we steadily lost about 10-15 folks over the course of the day. This is not the 100 that Father Alex had originally expected, but it was still a good number and represented people from all aspects of the Mission. We had sessions dedicated to: a "state of the union" address by Father (in which he described the current programs and projects of the Mission and talked about the structure of the Mission), a discussion of self care and a session focused on an exercise Ken call's the "River of Life."

The River of Life exercise asks people think of their lives as the metaphor of a river and track the flow and challenges that they have met (including the tributaries or streams that have fed their river) as the movement of a river. We did this exercise as a "life" river and a "work" river - and used the "work river" as an opportunity to pull insights from the attendees regarding their "challenges and triumphs" of working at the Mission.

I really feel like we accomplished our goals of showing people they are respected and supported, creating a safe environment for people to provide feedback, and we had an opportunity to model a communication style for people to pull from. The entire first day of the retreat lasted 8 hours. Reflecting on the feedback we received from the participants - it seems fair to say that everyone really enjoyed themselves. One attendee even remarked, "I consider it important to be more united at our work, to love our neighbors, and to help others. I feel that this retreat helped us to reunite around our common goals and efforts."

Tomorrow we will have our first day with the "steering committee" portion of the retreat; and our plan is to discuss the basics of developing a steering committee, organizing job descriptions and developing a template for strategic planning. The entire retreat is a fantastic opportunity for HBI to work on building bridges that are all about empowering local organizations and efforts. The work that the staff and leadership of the Mission of Alto Cayma have committed to undertake for this three-day exercise is very impressive.