V2: A Way to Double You

Our last week of Technical Training wasn't all about propping up a community project, it was also our week to learn about V2. This is a program that encourages youth to become volunteers themselves and from there improve their community on their own. The idea is to organize and aide their agreed on mission. It's a great program and if I have the opportunity I'd love to utilize it. We as a cluster got to use it in a limited form and our plan was to train youth volunteers to run a short Padayon.

Padayon is a Visayan term for continuation and as a camp it is where youth volunteers learn how to run a camp, at a camp, then turn around and immediately plan and run their own camp. The actual thing lasts about eight days and looks like a blast. What we did for our V2 practicum was make a mini-padayon.

We gathered a dozen or so local youths from an alternative school as our volunteers. We had them participate in several games/activities we liked and figured might work for younger kids who they'd eventually be running them with themselves. Kaiti and I were lucky enough to facilitate the spider-web low ropes course, it's one of my favorites.

We strung up elastic sting all over the gazebo at the New Cabalan Barangay, to make a three dimensional spidery looking web of string. The idea of the spider-web is to get from one end to the other of the web without touching a single string. If you do hit a web you have to start the course over.

SIDENOTE: When I did this at our youth camp I had the hardest time making it through and I was annoyed that I couldn't make it through. I tried over twenty times before I made it through. Although, no one saw me do it, so you have to take my word.

Anyway, it can be a really tough activity if you're not creative or aware of your body. The youth volunteers loved it. There was one who was having a tough go of it and kept having to restart after getting so close to the end. Over and over she hit a line and was obviously not happy that either she couldn't do it or that we were so strict on the rules. Finally she made it and everyone was shouting and clapping. She looked very pleased with her hard work.

This training was done on Thursday, on Saturday we got to see if they could handle a massive number of kids on their own. Saturday was where they had full control and we just hung around and observed, snapping photos and the such. Kaiti and I strung up one spider-web, we gave them another set of string to do their own.

What happened thereafter was all their doing and they did great. These youths ran the show like pros and everyone had a blast. Us PCTs were exposed to a few local games that were unique. One had you hit a matchbox across the floor with a eggplant tied to a string between your legs, ridiculous.

This was a great success.