News

Last month the Volunteer Support Services Programme hosted the Mastering Debriefing workshop facilitated by Mirna Tarabay. This three hour interactive workshop was aimed specifically at Volunteer Managers, to provide them with the opportunity to engage in discussion, reflection and skill development relating to debriefing.

During the workshop, participants were able to review the aims of debriefing, discuss the situations when volunteers may require debriefing, reflect on the challenges that they face when debriefing volunteers as well as identify strategies that support them to overcome some of the process challenge and discuss effective debriefing skills.

Feedback from participants was very positive. Many found the breakout sessions for problem solving the most informative. Participants enjoyed sharing debriefing strategies such as how best to debrief in certain situations, approaches and stories from different scenarios, and how other managers resolved particular situations.

“This is such a great opportunity for us as managers to network, receive a form of support and it’s an opportunity for us to debrief and learn from each other” said one of the attendees.

“The whole group was so giving with their advice and knowledge about debriefing. As a virtual newbie to all of this I found that very helpful” said another.

This session was so popular we had to run a second session. We recognise this is a topic of great importance to volunteer managers and hope to offer sessions again in the future.