GreenFriends’ Train the Trainers Course
Saturday 9 & Sunday 10 December 2023
Trainers: Eoin & Domi
The course began with four questions: Why are we here? What do we want to get out of the course? Are there any concerns we have about teaching? What expertise/experience might we be bringing as potential trainers?
This was not just a course about growing vegetables, but was actually an amazing life coaching weekend preparing the attendees to face challenges in all manners of work, life, society and each individual’s own development.
Our coaches were the Grand Wizard, Eoin, a legend in his own lifetime, as you can see from all his accomplishments, such as starting the main food bank chain in Ireland and UK that has provided 250 million meals, with the likes of Tesco taking an active role. It is his great achievement that the Pope invited him to the Vatican in recognition of this effort! There are too many achievements to name here and naming them will really make him blush with embarrassment.
He was assisted and his brilliant wife, Domi who despite advanced pregnancy kept the course on schedule and gave wonderful advice about facing an audience. It was charming to see their three year old daughter also joining us and spreading joy.
Eoin talked about community and HIVES and how physically touching the earth grounds us and releases happy hormones. He said that education is only “lighting the fire” to inspire, that we don’t actually teach but help students learn!
He gave some interesting and also worrying statistics such as 81% of the world’s soil is used to grow meat and that regular farming (according to Royal Agricultural University teaching) involves the use of 17 ‘interventions’ to successfully grow a crop of wheat, with each intervention being an euphemism for spraying with insecticide, fungicide, chemical fertilisers etc etc!! No wonder there are so many allergies and intolerances in people these days.
The course was about how to teach ‘anything’. He suggested reflecting on our best teaching experience and on the metaphor that this created in our minds (in my case — a lemon) and about the multiple intelligences that we could develop. He said that teaching is like ‘telling a compelling story’ and how we could give the big picture first. He gave the metaphor of the “Tiger, the Pig and the Phoenix” meaning how the trainer could catch the audience’s attention initially, then keep it going with loads of good information and end with something beautiful that everyone will remember.
As part of the course, we were asked to give an 8 minute talk on whatever topic took our fancy, the catch being that we were given an hour or so to prepare!! It was daunting but quite exhilarating, and I waffled about Keston common and the river Ravensbourne that runs as a culvert through our ashram. He gave us a few more hours’ notice to prepare another short talk on a topic from the wonderful ‘Get Growing’ manual that he helped to write. This was in some ways more challenging as some of us had very little growing experience and all of us were quite nervous and apprehensive. Eoin and Domi were very supportive and made it clear that it was our choice whether to present or not.
We were all very surprised as all of us performed well, including the complete novices, who used their inexperience to their advantage to involve the audience in the discussion. For my part, I took the easy way out and made a Power Point Presentation on the topic of ‘ A brief history of the onion & garlic’, mainly because I didn’t want any interaction with the crowd! I must say the talk was quite well received, especially the part about the ancient Greek Olympians rubbing onions on their skin to make their muscles strong and the puranic story of the churning of the milky ocean! Yes, Alliums go back a long way.
We ended the course reflecting on aspects of being a good teacher, using feedback and good preparation to improve our teaching skills; of having a dream and an idea of what part, however small or big, that we wanted to play, not only in teaching but by implication in the bigger picture of the community, the environment and the world.
A big thank you to the Wizard and his good wife for the wonderful teaching.
For sure you will see all the attendees helping to teach aspects of the ‘Get Growing Course for beginners’ in the coming years. We owe it to Eoin and Domi. By the way, they will be taking the ‘Get Growing Course for beginners’ next April 2024 as well. So do join if you can.
Aum Amriteshwaryai Namah
Dr Vakees Thanga
Embracing the World
Embracing the World (ETW) is a global network of humanitarian organisations inspired by the Indian-based humanitarian initiatives of the Mata Amritanandamayi Math. Embracing the World exists to help alleviate the suffering the burden of the world’s poor through helping to meet each of their five basic needs — food, shelter, healthcare, education and livelihood — wherever and whenever possible.
Amma, the founder of ETW, teaches that everyone — rich or poor — has the power to make a difference in the life of another, and that no selfless gesture is insignificant. Rather, it is the selfless actions we perform for one another that hold the keys to true peace — the peace of the individual, the peace of the community and the peace amoung diverse culture, nations and faiths.
GreenFriends
GreenFriends, the environmental branch of ETW, is a rapidly growing, global grassroots movement promoting environmental awareness and local participation in conservation efforts in over 23 countries. GreenFriends’ unique approach integrates ecology with the core values of selfless service and awareness of the unity of all life.
