MODULE 2 - Section 4
Preparing the Team
10 Minutes to complete section and related assignments
In this section, you will learn:
The importance of pre-community training for a short-term team
Introduction
Even though a team may be in your community short-term, they will be engaging with people, relationships and work that has been and will continue to happen long-term.
The amount of preparation a short-term team engages in doesn’t need to match that of a long-term worker. But, because they are involved in long-term dynamics, they should be equipped with adapted long-term principles to support their short-term efforts. This is a core purpose of pre-community preparation.
Team Training
Every One Collective team is required to engage in team training, which is the primary way a team prepares for their visit. Between the resources of the Short-Term Teams Department and those of the goer-group, team training must cover five key components:
Spiritual preparation
Self-awareness
Team building
Cultural awareness
Healthy poverty alleviation/community development principles
The STT Department provides a team-driven training schedule and resources that strongly cover cultural awareness and poverty alleviation principles and moderately covers self-awareness and team building. The training schedule strongly recommends 5 team meetings at an every other week pace and includes self-study in prep for each meeting. The remaining three training components, spiritual preparation, self-awareness, and team building, are the team’s responsibility. If you would like to know more about the training the STT Dept provides to short-term teams, please reach out to stteams@onecollective.org.
Team Leadership Calls:
1. Pre-Community Preparation
This call is to help the leader create healthy expectations for the other team members, understand the nature of long-term transformation and how they can support it through short-term efforts, and consider how to take a group of individuals and move them toward a unified team.
2. On-Field Preparation
In this call, the attention shifts toward thinking about what it means to lead when everything goes “live” in-community, from team dynamics to basic security and more.
The success of the team is often driven by the health of a team leader’s leadership. To help the rest of the team embrace the posture of a teachable, flexible learner, we start with the team leader. Most team leaders have two leadership coaching calls with the STT Director or the Training Coordinator.
These two leadership calls are in addition to the vetting/setting expectations call at the beginning of the process, and the debrief call that occurs when the short-term team is complete.
Pre-Community Meetings with the Host-Coordinator
While the STT Department helps prepare the team in a general sense, only you, the host-coordinator, have nuanced insight into what is happening in your community. You also know important information about how the team will engage while there.
The host-coordinator does not participate in the team training described above, but it is expected that you have at least one call with the team/team leader about two months before the team’s arrival. On this call, it is tremendously valuable for you to share why a team’s posture of listening and learning is important in your particular context and inform them of any planning details specific to your community (i.e. project information, packing tips, arrival instructions, etc.). Your meaningful connection before the team arrives is also a way to invest in the long-term potential of the relationship. You and the team leader can decide if it would be better to connect one-on-one or have the entire team on the call(s).
As part of the preparation process, there are several resources available to the team to help them engage well
Community Guide
The host-community coordinator shares the Community Guide with the short-term team prior to their arrival. This document gives detailed insights specific to your community (i.e. culture, overview of the work being done, specific security items, and much more). In many ways, this resource provides a pre-orientation for the team. You will create a Community Guide for your unique context in Section 6.
General Security Training
A thorough general security training is provided to short-term team members in their application portal. It includes a supplementary training section for secure communities. However, you will want to provide any community-specific security advisories to the team both in advance of departure and again during in-community orientation.
Fundraising & Prayer Team Guide
Many short-term teams will raise funds through their local networks. A resource on how to build a fundraising and prayer support team is available to the team in their application portal.
General Packing List
A general packing list is provided to team members in their application portal. However, your community may have unique aspects to prepare for (i.e. weather, elevation, accommodations, food, walking, etc.). You are encouraged to create a community-specific packing list to share with the short-term team at least two weeks before their arrival. This can be a part of your Community Guide.
