After a successful first Challenge Leader Training Day, one of our lovely Lincoln Leaders, Beth, writes about her experience and what she took from the day. If you weren’t able to make the training day or webinar, please get in touch with one of the team and we’ll fill you in with all the necessary training.

I’ll be honest I was sat on the tube at 08:00am, asking myself the question ‘what am I going to get from today?’. At the start, I was unsure but by the end of the day, I had several different answers. Don’t get me wrong, I was filled to the brim with excitement but I didn’t realise how much I would gain from the day.  

Personally my favourite thing was to really put yourself out there. Something so simple which is very effective. It’s such an invaluable quality and it totally made recruiting so much more fun. It was so exciting getting people psyched up about the trek and the extension trip. I know I’m not the only one who’s googled ‘how to pronounce Huacachina’. It’s like rolling your tongue, either you can do it or you can’t. Unfortunately, this was an area I lacked in and trying to sell an extension trip when you can’t say the name is mildly embarrassing. I knew this would be my downfall with recruitment so hearing so many people say it really helped.

During the day a suggestion was thrown out there to flyer in the toilets on a night out. Standing in the toilets at 2am, being the only sober person and trying to convince people to come on a trip with you isn’t creepy... it’s smart and It works. I got a few looks, believe me but I got even more positive responses. Spending the night sober and being surrounded by drunk people, made me realise that alcohol isn’t everything. I’m little bit of a fiend when it comes to alcohol (I’m sure I’m not the only one) and I forget that some people aren’t like me. So doing something different, which doesn’t involve getting totally trashed is actually a great idea. After spending a rainy day brainstorming (no pun intended), me and my companions came up with some fantastic ideas to make sure everyone is involved when it comes down to socials.

After doing a couple of fundraising events before, it was really great to see other people and their ideas around what to do to raise money. There were some amazing suggestions and it was nice that we could help each other with our knowledge from past experiences.

It’s quite hard really to sum up everything, I could write pages about what I learned and my experience so far. I think the most important thing to remember is to just have fun and be yourself. A smile goes a long way!

- Beth Sawyer.

 A massive thanks to Beth for writing this blog. If you have any experiences you’d like to share with the leaders, please get in touch with one of the team and we’ll be more than happy to share your content!