By Amadu G. Kabia, YES Sierra Leone, 2010-2011

To help share some leadership skills and ideas, I organized a Team Building Training with the YES management team for the Sierra Leone YES alumni group on July 30-31, 2014. The training was meant to help motivate future leaders in the association to start taking up responsibilities and be determined, as well as to foster peace and development in the association. It was based on the YES Leaders' training held in Amman in March. As a leader who represented the Sierra Leone Association during the training in Amman, it was a great honor to participate in the training and share the experiences with fellow alumni in the association. I believe this will greatly help us to keep the association alive. The training was very important to all alumni members as we had ample time writing our mission, vision statement and smart goals for our Alumni Association. 

I discussed much about leadership skills and how to lead our alumni group effectively, and our constitution was fixed as well at the ending of the workshop. The meaning of leadership and leadership styles was also dealt with in detail during the training. 

I also discussed about partnership and collaboration, as this will help us expand our YES family, and identified the type of partners needed by our association, such as a sponsor, mentor and volunteer partners. It was an important activity during the workshop, as participants were extremely happy coming up with ideas of allocating partners. 

The new alumni had the opportunity to learn how to get involved in their communities, as this will help us achieve our goals very easily. 

At the ending of the training, alumni presented Capstone Posters picturing the Sierra Leone YES Alumni Association. Also, the Sierra Leone management team, together with the alumni, started setting up a new constitution for our YES Alumni Association. The training was done on PowerPoint Presentations and a flip chart. 

Alumni also celebrated International Friendship Day (July 30) by sending appreciation messages/thank you messages to international YES families.