Coffee and Culture

Every week, girls from different countries and different patterns of life meet in Dawliffe Hall (Chelsea, London). They have named these gatherings Coffee and Culture! 

What are these meetings about? As the name suggests, participants meet in a cozy living room holding cups of hot coffee in their hands! Every week a different speaker shares a special "something" with the girls (a story, an idea, an experience) and leads a lively discussion in which everyone is encouraged to share her thoughts.  

Our friend Fran is a volunteer. She is also a member of the Coffee and Culture! We met her right after a talk on The History of Happiness and asked her why it is important for young volunteers to develop their personal and emotional skills by joining groups like this one. And here's her answer!

"From the talk on ‘The History of Happiness’ I have discovered a new way of looking at happiness, what is necessary for happiness/ optimal functioning etc. This has helped me change my outlook on my work as being a University student sometimes I get overwhelmed with the work load. Therefore knowing that I am working towards a goal, and that sometimes this goal involves difficulties along the way helps put things into perspective.

Hopefully I will be able to apply this to the current volunteering I do and pass on what I have learnt to younger students."

Would you like to learn more about this? We do!

We are looking forward to getting more information about the Coffee and Culture!!!

The advantages of social media and how to build your own platform

We were lucky to have Marta Matias, a media strategist from the International University of Barcelona at Baytree. Her expertise in Social media has me thinking of the world we live in. Certainly Social Media is around us. We may be a generation that simply adores the fast paced instant contact, for business as well as personal purposes. I have learnt Social Media is:

GREAT FOR NETWORKING

Do you love networking? Then twitter is the best way! With a click of the mouse you can go from being a mere stranger to building a high profile platform with quite a large number of audiences in minutes.

GET A STRONG PASSWORD

Matias suggested we should always make a password of more than 10 letters with numbers and lower/higher case letters. This can protect your identity from hackers. She said use a sentence rather than your favourite word. Fair enough with the high media coverage and almost ¾ quarters of the world using social media we definitely need to protect our privacy.

PICTURES FEED OUR DESIRES

Want to become an expert at something? If you are into fashion you can take a Prada bag and a good picture, upload it on any social media and you are guaranteed to have followers in minutes. A picture can convey a message without using words in fact it sells. No doubt then, social media is a very clever tool and used wisely and I mean wisely can seriously make you business.

EXPOSURE IS A RISK

However, like all things using social media comes with a certain risk. Exposure comes with attracting both followers and haters. Be prepared for the unexpected if you are using Facebook, as this is a gossip market. Exposure is a good thing because we are pro-consumers, we dictate which products we want so power to the people but with many changes going on in social media, one has to wonder:

1. How to control a virtual world, where everyone has a right to voice their opinion which can destroy our image if anything bad gets posted

2. Overload of everything is like too much of a headache at times

3. Nothing is stable for long on social media

Matias suggests success online means to be open, own up to anything otherwise someone will do it for you and you may not like it. One thing for sure social media is innovative and also an everlasting progressive art form and we can be masters at it, if we choose.

So what is the best way to establish your platform? Know your subject and talk about it on social media. Keep the same subject, don’t be an expert of everything. Having your niche makes you stand out.

Matias suggests the content of information must be valuable, have no barriers (people must be allowed to comment), must be conversational and there must be sharing.

THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Tweet tweet tweet if you want to get instant information out there.

YouTube is the way forward!!! Whether you use social media or not, it’s the future for personal and business use and if you are not part of it, it’s likely you will lose out in some way.

Leaving the seminar I felt much more informed knowing that new ideas will lead to new discoveries and the platform of social media is open to all.

Time for reflection

The Give to Gain project seems to be coming to an end too quickly! All of these months have seen so many amazing things going on and wonderful young women working together. 

At Baytree, the G2G Media and Management Team is now half way in their journey as facilitators of the Media and Management seminar series and it is time for some nice and wise reflections on what we’ve done and learnt!

Thanks to the Team efforts, the training programme reached more than 30 volunteers and community members! They received high quality training in different areas, such as teaching, journalism and media. Most of them told us that the workshops were great and definitely in line with their expectations! I think this is a very good start.

The best part is that those young attendees who were not involved in any of the Baytree volunteering opportunities said that they would love to know more and get on board because they feel they have something to give. This is the spirit!

This is a real lesson for us about the potential local communities have when people with different skills and a lot of enthusiasm come together. You just need a small spark, like an interesting workshop, and people meet… and they talk and share… and the rest come naturally!

But the Give to Gain has taught us something else. This project has connected volunteers across boarders!

Recently, the Spanish team called us on Skype! It was my first real-time contact with our partners. They told us about their work running homework clubs for children and promoting initiatives to support the community as a whole. These young women are doing a great job! But what really impressed me was the enthusiasm and optimism that remained with me after the call was over. Does it sound cheesy? Well, you should try!

Share your positive experience because people can get a lot of positive energy out of it!

What have you learnt? How do you feel about being part of the project?

Comments, comments, comments! I want to know all of your thoughts!

I am sure we are all ready to rock all of the activities that we have planned for the final part of the project! Best of luck to you all!

Chiara

Media and Management Team