Author: Timo Muttonen, scout group leader
Olarin Eräkotkat – Wild Eagles ry is a multicultural and bilingual scout group with 120 members, based in Opinmäki, Espoo. The group's board leads some twenty adult volunteers and organises activities and scout education for around a hundred children and young people. To ensure the group's growth, the board develops itself and the whole group to work better towards fulfilling our mission. What matters to us are the values of scouting, sustainable development, the surrounding nature and multicultural activities. Our mission, in short, is to Save the World.
Topaasia and Jussi are familiar to me from my work with growth companies. As scout group leader it was easy for me to choose Topaasia, because I have seen how well Topaasia works in my own job. We held a development meeting with the board remotely and used Topaasia to clarify the core of what we do and what drives us volunteers forward towards our goals. As an outcome, we hoped to find the activity and idea which, by maintaining and developing it, would give us the best boost for doing volunteer work.
We chose the Work Community deck, and as perspectives the Most Inspiring, Most Challenging and Most Advancing thing. The outcome that emerged was maintaining enthusiasm, which for us means coping, succeeding and a sense of community. Reflecting on the outcome, we set the goals and actions for 2021 that will best carry us as a board through next year. I like the final phase of the game, where you are purposefully guided to make an action plan for moving things forward. Topaasia does not leave anything hanging in the air.The benefit was clear and concrete. We now have a thing we commit to, one that guides the board's work and its members in the group's various roles. An excellent aspect was that everyone participated and got to voice their own feelings and opinions. Topaasia was easy to use, the interface worked admirably and the conversations about the cards and the voting led to excellent observations. Our board is very diverse, and the age gap alone spans from 17 to 59 years. There is a lot of leadership experience. In scouting, the first experiences and first steps of leadership are taken already at age 7 as a wolf cub.
Topaasia suits the volunteer work context excellently. The challenges and areas for development are no different from the business world. The emphases between organisational work and business are of course different. The cards are easy to adapt to the language of volunteer work, and facilitation is a familiar method for us scouts. The wonderful thing about scouts is that there is a lot of willingness to experiment. I was really pleased with the spirit of the session and how the group threw themselves into it. Because of the coronavirus we have moved into the digital world at speed, and Topaasia is a good example of a digital development method that works.
I warmly recommend Topaasia to all volunteer organisations. There are many card decks, and among them you will find the right areas where we have room to develop. Jussi has an excellent ability to identify the challenges and help the customer choose the right deck. The instructions are clear and support is available from Jussi. I have been leading in scouting for over 40 years, and Topaasia is one of the handiest tools at absolutely every level, from national organisations to the grassroots, for improving the quality of what we do.
Olarin Eräkotkat-Wild Eagles ry Timo Muttonen Scout group leader timo.muttonen@erakotkat.fi www.erakotkat.fi
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