GIN + Golden Hearts!

Today, the Golden Hearts students and GIN members reunited! Golden Hearts members were chosen last year for the GISS conference, and they were students who carried out great projects in their own community. It was so inspiring to meet them again because it was amazing to see that they are still working on the success of others. Tito, a member of the JUMP foundation, came again to lead us. We played two games as energizers: fruit basket and mingle. I really enjoyed fruit basket because it was something new for the club, and I thought we could play this game again sometime within our group. We also made handshake partners (lumber jack handshake and cappuccino handshake). We didn’t really use this, but it was fun to use this again after months.

After the games, we had two activities: What is success to me? And What are the challenges? This provided us a chance to reflect on what success really means to me and gave me an idea of where I should head. Success is an endless journey, not a destination. Even if we fail to do something, there is always something to learn and we should never stop pushing ourselves further. Within our group, when we discussed what the limiting factors were, most of them turned out to be from “self,” meaning that our laziness, lack of time, and we make our life itself a barrier to reach further success.

In the afternoon, I attended two workshops: Poaching and Education. Both workshops were done by the GIN members and I thought they were both informative and interactive. I really enjoyed poaching because the power point presentation was relevant to Kenya and the game was really unique. The game was basically a tag game except people were divided into 4 groups: carnivores, herbivores, poachers and conservers. Carnivores can catch herbivores, poachers can catch both, and conservers can save both animals. For education, the group compared the education in Kenya and Finland with videos and presentations. We were divided into two groups and we debated on what is a better education: Quantity or Quality? This gave me an idea that both are important so it was hard to choose a side.

Overall, I was extremely happy to see the Golden Hearts again. I hope to see them sometime again because they suggested that GIN and they should do a project together. We should start planning what to do!