In many workshops and conferences, planners so desperately want to teach attendees about collaboration. Most exercises used to teach these important team sensibilities may help the participants, but few have a lasting impact on the attendees, let alone other people and communities.
In last week’s blog we wrote about U Build it Bikes for Kids, a program where participants construct bikes to be given to children at local charities. This week we’re highlighting the Helping Hands program. These programs extend the reach of your conference’s team building experience far beyond your event, and positively impact communities and people long after your meeting has ended, locally and even on a global scale.
Helping Hands is a program of Odyssey Teams, Inc. The Chico-based company came up with the idea of combining philanthropy and team building workshops in 2000 and since then hasn't looked back. They offer a variety of programs but one program really drew our attention for both its ease of implementation during a meeting or conference, and for the incredibly positive impact it has on the individuals benefiting.
Helping Hands is about changing lives. It's about accessing the potential of our hands, heads and hearts to build a better team, a better organization and a better world. Attendees will be building hands needed by tens of thousands of people around the world who cannot afford prosthetic devices. The Helping Hands process teaches groups to model true collaboration, commitment and quality - borne from a deeper sense of connection to products, colleagues and customers.
Recipients of the Helping Hands program around the world.
As a result of this program, thousands of amputees around the world can now dress themselves, eat on their own, and care for their families with the help of an Odyssey Teams-crafted prosthetic. And innumerable corporate employees have been re-connected with the power of caring and collaboration in the workplace.
The Helping Hands program is fully scalable. It can be for small meetings or for conferences with thousands. Abbott, Wal-Mart, Novartis and Cisco are among the many companies who have used this program at their meetings with their resulted hands being sent to help people in Columbia, Vietnam, and other places.
Learn more about Odyssey Teams,Inc. by visiting their website.
Reach out to them via phone at .
Photographs courtesy of Odyssey Teams, Inc.
-Al Wynant
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