The Fire Challenge

Four of us (Lina, Ivo, Carola and Biz) have been at the Youth Initiative Forum conference over the last few days, and what better place to do the Fire Task?

We decided to work together on the task, we thought about transforming a space here, but it seemed that the most appropriate thing was to inspire attendees to take action at home, so we concentrated on inspiring that through the activities described below.

Here's a video explaining more...

Here's the results...

We hosted a session on: How can we bring the Spirit of the conference back home? 

During the session we had a 2 hour brainstorm and everyone was enthusiastic about all the things we could do. We then created a Facebook group where we can post all the actions people are doing afterwards so keep up date and encourage each other.

We came up with a whole list of things that people can do back home which we will distribute at the end of the week and we have a big harvest hanging in the main hall to inspire others to do the same. Some of the main ideas that came out were:

1. Leave nice messages on hidden places in the train, plane or car. Some of us are hitchhiking back, so we will think of some questions we can ask the nice people that take us.

2. A flashmob on the metro, to spread the message: Are you living your dream, or are you the sidekick in someone else’s dream?

3. A wandering book – where you note precious moments for you and you pass it on to another person until it is full. At the end is our address so that we can get it back in the end. 

How do we spark a fire in people?

You get them to dance! We initiated a samba roda, which then evolved into a full blown dancing frenzy with live music, generating a great energy and warming everybody up.

We invited people to draw their hands, and write inside what they will take away with them from the Youth Initiative Forum.

The Initiative Forum is great for inspiring ideas but we wanted to spark action from the simmering pot of ideas that a conference generates. We challenged people to share how they would get their hands stuck in once they got back home. We asked people to draw their hands and write down their commitment to action. We then hung up the results to inspire others to action.

We gave people badges to spark conversations

There are 250 people here, and it's a great opportunity to collaborate and share ideas, but sometimes difficult to start the right conversations.  To get people connecting, we created medalions for people to wear. On one side people wrote the talents they have and on the other the talents that they need in their projects, lives etc. This way you will faster find the people that are right for you, and more initiatives might evolve after the conference thanks to this. 

We started an origami domino-effect…

We taught people origami, asking them to pass on the skill to others, thus sparking a skills-forward, encouraging people to share their talents with others.