11 December 2019
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, again. Dusk is earlier than usual so we get to sit by the fire and spend time with family, watching a movie, playing a boardgame, having some food with sparkly wine, buying presents, and planning for parties.
With this time of the year comes the traditional “De Warmste Week”. A splendid initiative of the Belgian radio station “Studio Brussel” in which thousands of volunteers and companies make an effort to set up fundraisers for all kinds of charities. Unfortunately not everyone has it as comfortable or easy.
Ranging from animal welfare to food packages, clothing or research on rare diseases, there are more than 2000 different charities to support and more than 1000 different fundraisers in which one can actually participate or lend a hand or two.
The whole Co-Learning team wanted to participate as well. But what charity could we support? How can we possibly pick from a list of over 2000 different ones? We took a good look at what we do ourselves, what values we stand for and what we believe in, supporting local initiatives to make a change in our own region, our own country.
So, what do we do? At Co-Learning we aim to help people function better within teams, we try to make teams more adaptive to change, we bring energy to teams and let them have fun again in what they are doing; we foster teams to have better results from which they can learn and teach them to adapt so they can excel even more at what they do.
We do this by giving specific and practical trainings; by coaching people while they use the newly learned information and we stand between them, shoulder to shoulder, and work alongside them to book better results and have an actual positive impact on the team and the whole organisation.
Besides that we considered our core values to be working together, generating a positive impact and working respectfully with everyone. We don’t shy ownership and we learn most and best by actually doing things; diversity leads to new insights and above all, we have fun in what we do and this leads to an almost endless stream of energy.
So, let the search begin… There are quite a few charities that are linked to training, learning and having a positive impact within organisations. In the end we focused on a few specific words which actually meant something special to us:
Work-ethics. These are very important for us and in quite a few of our workshops we focus on these. Choose your own attitude; every morning you have the choice to look up to or look forward to your day. To start frowning or with a big smile on your face.
Competences. No matter what role you take in an organisation, your competences are extremely important, and the nice thing about competences is, you can learn them. Everyone can learn a certain competence, some people faster than others but where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Youth. Our future. And our team is there to support them. We are convinced that you can learn by doing as soon as you grasp the basics; this by being coached in your work instead of being bossed around. Learn something, apply those skills, get real support and adapt where needed.
All these values and principles brought us toward “vzw Jongerenatelier” from Kortrijk. They offer young people a first work experience in order to give them the important practical skills they need in their future professional life and coaching them towards the real world job market.
So, what can we do for those 120 young potentials which are supported every year?
Last year, aside from our coaching and consultancy, we have trained 186 people to attain certain competences. In our case, very specifically aimed at leadership, self-guided and multifunctional teams and dealing with change.
For every one of these participants we put 5 euros aside and added a bit to make a nice round number.
Dear “Jongerenatelier”, it is with a lot of pleasure, and a little bit of pride that we can give you 1000 euro to support your cause. Good luck!
PS. The end of the year is typically a moment to not only look back but also look forward to the coming year. Next year we want to double the amount of people we train to hone their skills and competences. Keep an eye out for more on our social media channels to learn more about the exciting new initiatives and plans we have in stock for you.
