TOE Timeline Chicago

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Event Activities

In March 2008, the US TOE committee hosted the German DAG committee in downtown Chicago. The objectives for this meeting were to share and discuss our drafts and to make decisions governing the final format of the handbook. We had mixed country meetings regarding the review of each countries drafts of their own handbooks. We discussed edits and new topics that emerged. We also worked separately in our country groups, again taking into account the input each other's counterparts.

We spent time piloting a lot of activities that could be employed at orientations. These activities were evaluated and critiqued by the entire group, as to their applicability and value.

Each country group defined a training plan to educate the orientation leaders and liaisons of the new handbook and the new orientation materials. How would this training be administered? Video, powerpoint?. What was the timeline for this? Who would be involved in this training and where would this training be best administered? We spent time discussing logistics and the reality of reaching the right AFS volunteer/host family audience with our new materials. A video representation of the new activities would be explored and a powerpoint would be created as the vehicle to train about the new handbook and the project.

Another newsletter article was drafted, giving a new report of the project - where we were etc.

We continued to work on our parking lot topics, integrating them into the context where needed, doing research and creating new topics as they surfaced, such as the legalization of marijuana from state to state in the U.S. and how that is different from the legal marijuana perception in Germany. Committee members were assigned topics to review and to report later.

The meeting included a panel discussion. We hosted area AFS leaders, volunteers, former and current host families and students. The discussion was facilitated by one of the US committee members.

A cultural afternoon was planned. We visited the Chicago History Museum as a group and later smaller groups continued to other museums or shopping. We all came together for a signature Chicago deep dish pizza dinner in busy Chicago restaurant. We finalized our meeting with a farewell dinner at an area restaurant.

Evaluation

In retrospect, should we have had more learning/cultural immersion and not so much “cranking it out” time. It may have been valuable to have incorporated an excursion outside of the city to work and to take in the cultural landscape. This would be greatly to the guest committees advantage. Overall, should we have taken more time on processing and cultivating this cultural experience as we went through the process? Could we have shared more of our expectations, reflections and realities with the German group.

Having the meeting in Chicago, may have been logistically and financially reasonable, but was it the best place for the meeting? The type of meeting space can have an impact on the guests and their perception of U.S. life. We chose a religious conference because the facilities were all inclusive and very reasonable, however, the other retreat guests and the facility may have given a skewed impression of U.S. culture to our German visitors. The time spent of developing the new activities to accompany the handbook, were found to be almost always applicable in a cultural general way. So, if we focus on the handbook and not on the activities,we would streamline the process – that was a learning experience but we don’t need to repeat for another country.

The panel discussion was disappointing. Although it was interesting, and an enjoyable social time, we did not learn anything particularly pertinent to our project.

Next time assign an event photographer and complete the summary report within 6 weeks after the event.

Resources

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May 24 2012
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