ICE BREAKER: We Energy

Objectives:

• Help the participants of a training programme to know the other participants and befriend them.

• Initial step in developing team spirit by understanding how the strengths of a friend or team member is the strength of the group of friends or team and how the members can complement each other with their individual strength to overcome their individual weakness

• The participants to appreciate diversity viz. cultural, vocational, etc.

Materials needed: 

1. Sketch pen set for each participant

2. Notepad for each participant

3. writing (ball tip) pen for each participant

Duration of the activity: 30 minutes

The Activity:

Briefing to begin the activity:

The facilitator to open the activity by sensitising the participants to the fact, all the five fingers in our hand are not identical, but they complement each other in effective use of our hand. 

Then ask all the participants to group up into groups of five according to the colour of their clothes. No group should have members with of similar colours. The facilitator then gives the groups twenty minutes for the members to get to know each other and make a note of each other’s name, age, qualification, interests and strengths. Each friend in the group of friends will then sketch on his or her fingers his friends in the group and name each finger on the friend it depicts. 

After twenty minutes, the facilitator can asks any member of a group to present his or her friends in the group to the class and mention how he or she benefits from the strengths of his or her group of friends. The activity completes with one member from every group having presented to the class his or her group of friends and how he benefits from their strengths.

  

Variations of the activity:

Variation 1:

The facilitator can ask the friends in each group to get to know each other along with their strengths and weakness and then each group is to develop a story based on the strength of every friend of the group and how they all together benefit from them. As an example, the facilitator narrates the story of four friends a lame, a blind, a deaf and a dumb who find a baby abandoned in the garbage and decide to take care of it and how they get together and overcome their handicap and take care of the baby.

The groups then do the activity in twenty minutes. Then the facilitator has a member from each group to present the members and narrates the story that depicts the strength of the members of the group.

Variation 2:

The facilitator can ask the friends in each group to get to know each other along with their strengths and weakness and then each group is to equate strength of a friend with one of the five senses: touch, see, smell, hear, taste. For instance, a friend’s strength is of being a good listener will represent the hearing sense; a friend is good in physical activities will represent the touch strength. In this way, each friend should represent one of the five senses.

Similarly, the facilitator can also encourage the groups to discuss their cultural uniqueness and exhibit it as the strength of the group.

The groups then do the activity in twenty minutes. Then the facilitator has a member from each group to present the members and narrate how the group benefits from the strengths or five senses of the group.

Please Note:

•  To perform this as a team activity, then replace “group” with “team” and “friends” with “members”.
•  This activity can be done by the school and college students too.