Welcoming Social Time

Objective: To invite students into an atmosphere of active participation and openness to freely express their thoughts amongst the group. Circles create a unifying shape that allows for each member to see each other in an equal way.

How: Utilize your artistic skills in crafting the aesthetics of the meeting space, as appropriate. Use signs, posters, colors, crafts, etc. in designing the ambiance suitable for the age range of students. As students arrive, give a handshake or "high five" to greet them individually, with a smile. Pre-brainstorm a question or conversation topic that can help open dialogue between participants, or simply ask how their week has been. Keep the energy up!

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Mindfulness Exercise

Objective: To become "one" with ourselves and with the group as a whole by introducing beginner's yoga, meditation, and exercise. Students will have the opportunity to be exposed to self-care while also loosening their muscles to let go of excess energy. How: Teachers and volunteers are given a mindfulness worksheet that pertains to each meeting outline. Included are: Three (3) yoga poses, one (1) mantra as a guided meditation, and multiple aerobic exercises that can be customized to suit specific needs.

How: Teachers and volunteers are given a mindfulness worksheet that pertains to each meeting outline. Included are: Three (3) yoga poses, one (1) mantra as a guided meditation, and multiple aerobic exercises that can be customized to suit specific needs.

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Fable or Folklore of the Week

Objective: To enrich the lives of students through philosophy, analysis, and compassion by reading and engaging with each other inside of fables and ancient stories passed down from generation to generation. Students are able to hear the story, perform it as a mini-play, or watch a video (depending on circumstance) so that they can build a better understanding of the theme/message and carry it with them throughout their future lives.

How: Teachers and volunteers are provided with a specific fable or tale of folklore that corresponds with the topic of their meeting outline. We provide links, videos, and other presentation ideas that coordinators can customize the specific needs of their students.

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Peace Circle with Group Discussion

Objective: To share an open dialogue of personal experience and advice between students through open-ended questions guided by volunteer teachers. Based on the fable or folklore story, we delve deeper into a greater understanding of how the message and theme apply to our real lives.

How: Teachers are provided with three (3) or more questions that elicit the sharing of personal stories and conversations between students to help "talk it out" as a means of building the message into their own lives.

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Arts, Crafts and Nature

Objective: To build a channel of self-expression and personal compassion through creative projects aimed at honing in on students' natural abilities, and combining forces in crafting items that help to bring a smile to other people from the local community. We interchange our project goals to focus on individual art forms, such as painting a self-portrait to commUNITY endeavors, such as friendship bracelets for students in younger grade levels.

How: Volunteers are able to choose between the provided projects that correlate with the specific meeting outline topic, or introduce their own ideas to share with the world.

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Team Work in a Brainstorming Challenge

Objective: To inspire leadership, critical/creative thinking, and teamwork within young people by working as a collective towards a common goal of helping the local community. Students are tasked with a question, social issue, or interpersonal situation that they must brainstorm upon together in order to figure out the best possible outcome and resolution.

How: Teachers are given a list of themes pertaining to meeting topics, and the goal is to have students work in separate teams or as one collective group to attempt and solve multi-layered issues that our world faces today. Volunteers may also invent their own problem-solving questions using local events or information to create an at-home solution that students can feel apart of.

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Theatre & Action Games

Objective: To introduce our students to performance art and personality expression as a means to laugh, play, and create hilarious memories through improv, one-word story building, and physical movement.

How: Volunteers have the ability to gauge their own student members in finding the proper games and activities to suit their needs. We provide an extensive list of interchangeable games that may be used at your disposal. The main goal of this is to encourage outgoingness and positive support of one another.