Team building is a collective term for various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams, often involving collaborative tasks. It is one of the most widely used group-development activities and it can be applied in various places to improve efficiency, for instance, in school classes. Its aim is to build effective working relationships, finding solutions to team problems and aligning around goals.

Today, 4 February 2019, in the third week of the Student Leadership Programme, a session based on team building was conducted at Patten College (Girls) which is a private secondary college situated at Rose Hill. The idea and motive behind this session were to inculcate the students of Grade 10 of the importance of team building. While being part of a team can be beneficial based on the quotation “United we stand, divided we fall”, building the proper environment and sustaining team spirit are primordial to leaders.

The class consisted of 27 students in all and they were grouped each in a team of 3 students. Each group were assigned different activities which enabled each team member to become involved in action planning, generating key ideas and finding the appropriate response.

We, at YUVA, believe that this activity will make the team members know their partners, to communicate accurately, to accept and support one another, to share ideas and understanding, to resolve conflicts constructively and how a good compliment and a bad one can impact someone’s behaviour.

As part of the Moral and Civic Education Programme, which has been launched by YUVA in January 2019, we also had the opportunity to interact with Grade 9 students (comprising of 28 students) on the specific theme known as ‘Citizenship’. We started by introducing ‘Citizenship’ followed by related activities like the use of modelling clays. In order to interact with the students, each one of them was requested to jot down their views on the characteristics of good and bad citizens. In brief, the motive was to bring an insight to the students how good citizens by virtue of their characteristics and specific traits demarcate from bad citizens.