Inspiring Freedom

⎯ SINCE 2013 ⎯

3

Saturday ( 16th of may) was a big day! All of the Freedom Fighters that are a part of our Freedom Fighters Academy started planning their final project they will implement in October in honor of the European Day against Human Trafficking.

The topic of the training was Project Design and Planning.

To get some inspiration we first watched this wonderful clip about a group of kids that saw a need in their community and worked hard to achieve their goal. We used the video to start the discussion about the Life Cycle of the Project:

Deciding & Identifying → Planning & Organizing → Implementing → Reviewing & Evaluating → Celebrating!

During the training we discussed how to find what motivates and inspires us to ensure that we will be passionate about the project we implement. We talked about addressing the needs but also the assets of a community. It is often very easy to pinpoint what a community needs but sometimes harder to evaluate what positive attributes each community has that could help us with our projects.

Other key tools we talked about were SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis of a Community and a Project, different Project Maps to Outline and Plan a project, and how to Delegate tasks to different team members.

After lunch we ran an Open Space where all of the participants were invited to come up with their own ideas for their projects and then form groups.

While all of the Freedom Fighters have a long way to go before they implement their projects in October, we are impressed with the initial concepts and ideas they have. Some examples of projects they plan to implement:

  • organizing a fair to raise funds for organizations working with victims of human trafficking
  • creating manual guides and trainings for medical students and doctors to identify victims
  • shooting a film to discuss the phenomenon of human trafficking in Romania
  • designing and maintaining a website to demonstrate what anti-trafficking events are taking place in Romania and encouraging citizens to get actively involved and communicate with one another about the issue
  • Paintball against Human Trafficking

We are really looking forward to watching these projects develop over the next 5 months and helping the Freedom Fighters implement them.

Bravo to all of the Freedom Fighters! It is always so exciting and encouraging for us to see young high school students be motivated and passionate about taking a stand against trafficking.