TOE Timeline Team Selection
From AFSWiki
Event Activities
In the fall of 2006 a notice was placed in the AFS News section of AFS Online advertising for volunteers for the TOE project (See Background and application Instructions below). An online application was made available via Zoomerang. In addition to the online application, volunteers had to submit a letter of reference. A similar process was followed in Germany. It was advertised that group members would need to pay a participation fee of 300 Euro to help cover the cost of their travels during the course of the project. This was based on a condition required by the donor who funded the project.
A selection committee was formed and consisted of five staff members with experience and/or education related to Germany and/or intercultural education. The applications and letters of reference were evaluated by the committee that was looking to create a balanced group of individuals with different backgrounds, from different areas of the country, and with appropriate skills for this project. Those who were chosen as finalists were then interviewed via phone conference by the selection committee.
In each country six volunteers were selected for the committee as well as one staff member whose role was slightly different than that of the volunteer group members. S/he was available to assist the project leader with administrative duties related to the work of the group and to some extent the logistics of the in-person meetings. Two alternates were also chosen should any of the finalists need to withdraw in the first year of the program.
Group members were asked to complete a standard biographical form which was circulated to all team members (in both countries). This gave each team member a little bit of knowledge about the other team members (including their pictures) to help them relate to each other during the initial phone conferences.
Evaluation
- In retrospect the Review Committee should not have consisted solely of staff members but this was recognized too late in the selection process to have an impact on the project.
- The Zoomerang application worked well in terms of the ease of sharing the applications with selection committee members.
- While all team members were told that this was a multi-year project that they were committing to, the realities of jobs/etc. sometimes meant that individuals would not be able to fulfill their commitment. Initially there were a couple of men in each country on the committee, however, all but one of them had to withdraw from the committee before a few months had passed. Two alternates were willing to step in and fill the spaces left by the members who could not fulfill the commitment, however, only one of these remained with the group. The final committee had only one of the original men from the US and a last-minute replacement on the German side who was an intern in the AFS-Germany office and who had never participated in any intercultural exchange or worked with AFS before. Despite these initial challenges once the teams had their first international meeting in Germany that fall, the level of excitement and comraderie for the program among the team members was so high that there were no further team changes during the remaining project.
- Publicizing – let AFS staff, etc. be able to nominate those they feel might be good on the team.
- Getting the excitement level up earlier might happen if we used Sykpe, etc. with the Germans – or some other form of in-person contact (in another group?)
- Identify and provide training on the technologies used in advance
- Important to have volunteers that represent the diversities in the US – we did a decent job this time
- Initially not knowing what our end product was made it difficult to focus on what we were doing
- Person-to-person connection is important to establish the group
- Would the above work as well in another culture?
- Should identify up front what technologies we will use
- Having to pay a fee to be in the group was viewed as a positive
- Upon acceptance, send group members an official letter congratulating them and outlining their responsibilities as a group member, including the deadline for payment of the participation fee and refund terms (i.e. if an individual leaves the group prior to the first in-person meeting).
