“What remains is what matters.” This phrase opened the refresher meeting for the Change the Game Academy’s Training for Trainers Course, held in Salvador on 4 September and it expresses the meeting’s spirit: an opportunity to bring together the educators who completed the course in 2024, and to revisit learning, exchange experiences and try out new educational tools.
The meeting was for trainers in the Change the Game’s two central themes of Mobilizing Political Support and Mobilizing Local Resources. Over the last year these trainers have continued to disseminate training, and support grassroots organizations and social movements in their territories.
Stories that teach
The training was run by Viviane Hermida, a Change the Game Master Trainer in Mobilizing Political Support, and Teacher and Storyteller Keu Apoema. Based on narratives from the fables “The Flowering Tree” and “The Old Man and the Vine”, the educators worked on exercises related to memory, collective creation and educational session planning, emphasizing the power of stories as teaching resources.
This methodology, which is fully attuned to Popular Education and CESE’s training work, supports the collective construction of knowledge, and values individual memories and people’s experiences in order to expand the critical capacity of the groups and collectives that participate in these courses.
In the morning session, the participants revisited recollections from the 2024 training, shared their trajectories as educators and explored the symbolism of traditional narratives. The afternoon involved a deep dive into practical activities: planning training sessions for the Mobilizing Political Support and Mobilizing Local Resources courses, using story telling as a methodology, striking a balance between content, creativity and educational intent.
Reencounters and new learning
For Lucyvanda Moura, CESE Projects and Training Advisor, Change the Game Master Trainer and Brazil Programme Coordinator, the meeting provided a space to revisit learning and witness the impact of the course on each trainer.
“It was so important to hear the educators describe how they applied the course in their educational practice. Some examples of these contributions included the focus on intentionality in planning a course or session; the use of new technologies and methods; planning resource mobilization for their own organizations; and reviewing the content of courses they have already given.”
In Lucyvanda’s opinion, the fun, playful methodology enabled participants to recall memories, spark new ideas and plan training in an even more strategic way.
The ambience was one of reencounters, exchanges and renewal. Maíse Silva, one of the trainers in Mobilizing Political Support and a member of the Collective of Women, Public Policies and Society (Coletivo de Mulheres, Políticas Públicas e Sociedade: MUPPS), summed it up like this:
“I would like to thank everyone for an excellent day of learning! It was such a nice break from the daily hustle and bustle! [Thanks to] the trainers for their guidance and the CESE team for such careful preparation! My words are growth, connection and renewal.”
