We are BOTH set to go on our way to Ottawa – Sept. 12th – 16th.

A quick blurb about SKWID below from VSO Canada.

“SKWID is a five-day course that explores the behaviours, attitudes and skills required to successfully implement a placement in one of VSO’s development programs. This course is a focused opportunity to consider and develop your skills as a development worker. Sessions in the course explore a range of common requirements of a placement with particular reference to developing the actionable individual skills that will help you to be effective in implementing different aspects of your placement in ways that are consistent with and will contribute to VSO’s overall approach to development.”

Course outline below:

Aim
To introduce you to the practical skills and attitudes you will need to implement VSO’s approach to development in your placement.

Objectives

By the end of the course, you will have:

• Analysed your placement in the context of VSO’s approaches to development.
• Identified the different roles that you may undertake at different times in your placement, working as a facilitator of change.
• Practised skills, attitudes and methods that you can use in these different roles.
• Reflected on your learning through the course and planned for how you will continue your learning in placement.

Themes

• For VSO, participation is a process of collective analysis, learning and action. The volunteer’s role in this process is to facilitate and/ or to be involved alongside other stakeholders.
• Participation underpins VSO’s three organisational approaches to development: Empowerment, partnership and commitment to learning.
• The volunteer undertakes different roles at different times in their placement as they work as a facilitator of change; these roles require different skills.
• Because of the very nature of VSO’s methodology, of working through individual volunteers, cutting across the public and private sphere, all volunteers have an advantage in working on inequalities between men and women, as well as other forms of disadvantage.

Features of the Course

• An emphasis on integrating action, theory, reflection and planning through active and experiential learning.
• Opportunities to design and practise participatory tools and facilitation skills.
• An emphasis on increasing the impact of placements through working with multiple stakeholders

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