Leadership Development Program

Venue: Philippine Red Cross Manila Chapter
Date: May 13-14 2011

Reason for attending:
I want to have a life. Basically, I was just bored at home without anything to do so I decided to go for something to happen to my life somehow. It was purely out of a whim.

DAY 1: May 13 - Orientation

It was hard waking up early in the morning when I had only slept an hour before I woke up. AM, Mel, and I decided to meet up at school since we want to confirm the results of the battery exam. Coincidentally, we met Mary, Aicel and Olive at school. We went to the headquarters together.

A small enough room was used as our venue. We met our speakers and some of our batchmates and some seniors.

The training started with a little getting to know each other as usual. A big circle was formed and each one has to say their name, make an action, and repeat the action and names of those who talked before them. We had a hard time because the process started in the opposing side. To actually forget the name of one of my batchmates was so embarrassing. I was really ashamed that his name is the only one I forgot or rather I didn't pay attention to.

The speaker, Sir A, grouped us and each group has to draw their expectation and their flag, decide on a name, and make a cheer. Our team was "The Best Team" and we also won the best cheer. Then we had a debate about the proposed renewal of marriage contracts. After a break, we had some talk/lecture about Red Cross. Then we played janken, where the losers have to stand behind the winner and the team who loses last will have to crawl between the other team's members' legs. Our team lost but that was a fun game because I had the chance to pull on their legs when I went through.

After lunch, there was a change in speaker and most of it was only about red cross. The rest was like some lecture but the speaker, Ms. L, was really  fun.

We ended the day early so AM, Mel, and I went to look around the bookstore for some things they needed. After an hour or so, we all went home, tired.



DAY 2: More Activities

We started our training later than usual but there was already an exciting activity. We tackled self-awareness by writing down our strengths, weakness, Achievements, Failures, Fears in life, Foreseen Future and drawing something that symbolizes us.

Just to say, I drew a manga to symbolize myself. Haha...I'm not telling the reason here though.

Our talk lasted for almost three hours and had an early lunch.

There were tons of activities that awaited us after lunch. There was charade, make-something-useful-out-of-things-deemed-useless, paint a picture, and the most awaited Amazing Race.

The race was really tiring with all four stations. Our group wasn't able to finish them all though.

First station: Tower building
Materials: Plastic Cups, a rubber band with six strings tied to it
Time Limit: Two Minutes
Objective: To build a tower with three bases and three storeys tall without using the hands to pile the cups.

----------This is really hard and tiring to do because the place where you need to make the tower is rather far from where you get the cup and there was strong winds! We managed to finish on time somehow and proceeded to the next challenge.

Second Station: Benta[Sell] Challenge
Materials: Scraps like Sticks, Stones, Bottle Caps, Candy Wrappers and Leaves etc.
Time Limit: No Time Limit
Objective: To sell each scrap for 10php with a total of 100php [there were ten kinds of scraps]

----------After the first challenge, we went to see Ms. L who was in charge of the station but we ended up doing it wrong. We should have sold all of the scraps first before going to the station! We really lost a lot of time. During our sale, we met various types of people who want and do not want to help us. What pissed us off most was some SM employees who were so rude when we asked them if they wanted to buy some or even just donate for Red Cross. They asked us various information like how do they know we are really from red cross and shits about them marketing. Crap! We moved on after a while. We met this really nice old woman who gave us ten pesos despite her own need for the money. We were really touched when we saw that those ten pesos probably was mostly from her sales. She really had a good heart.
              We were really glad to arrive at the station with Ms. L still there. She asked us to use half of the money to win the most number of tickets we could at quantum. We hurried inside and played then returned to the headquarters.

Fourth Station: Plastic Balloon challenge
Materials: Bucket, plastic balloons
Time Limit: 20 minutes
Objective: To place a blown up plastic balloon in the bucket without using the hands.

-----------We had a hard time making the balloon because our plastic balloons won't blow up. We managed to make a little one and used it in the challenge. Our group literally used our heads to place the balloon in the bucket wihtout touching it. And so the end of our challenge.

We headed back to our room for the evaluation, souvenir exchange, and some picture taking. Afterwards, we head our separate ways.



Aftermath Thoughts:
I actually enjoyed this leadership training. Out of all the leadership trainings I had attended when I was in grade school and high school was nothing compared to this one! It was really worth the time. I'm glad I was really bored the past days. If not, I wouldn't have the chance to experience something as wonderful as this and realize many things in the world.