After a busy day of program planning and budgets, it was time to use our brains in another way: for reflection. Aunt Z had scheduled in a “Leadership Reflection Activity” for the night, and the three of us were interested to see what she had in store.

We were each given 10 sticky notes – 5 for each of the other two girls. The green sticky notes were for writing down the best personal attributes of the team member and the pink sticky notes were for what valuable skills that she brought to the team. The funny thing is, although we run tons of teamwork and leadership workshops for our campers, these activities are not something we often take the time to do between ourselves. Even though we’ve known each other forever and are great at working together, it was still hard trying to pinpoint these specific attributes and skills. We split up to concentrate and once we were finished, came back to post the stickies on each other’s posters. We were surprised by how striking attributes and skills for each person were rightly highlighted and how in some instances, the attributes and skills were nailed by more than one person!

Lastly, we were each given one blue sticky note. This was for us to each write down one weakness that we wanted to work on and improve. Pondering our personal weaknesses and sharing them was so valuable because we now know our own as well as each others’ goals for change, and it will be easier now to maximize our individual strengths!

Thanks Aunt Zard for putting the thought into this activity, allowing us to take time to reflect on our personal strengths and weaknesses for the best possible teamwork 🙂

A budget can be a tricky thing to configure, especially when it’s three girls studying sciences and arts trying to do it. While Aunt Z hit the tennis court for her weekly lesson, the three of us talked in dollars, trying to estimate the expenses and revenues of the new projects we are taking on this summer, over Chez Cora’s heavenly crepes, eggs, and fresh fruit! In addition, we prepared for the big meeting we had in the afternoon with a few of our Aunt’s contacts in the business and entrepreneurship fields.

Lisa Chandler, Coach for Business Owners and Professionals at Chandler Coaches and Anita Nowak, Integrating Director at The Social Economy Initiative at McGill University took our meeting in a direction we hadn’t anticipated. After giving them an overview of how our organization has evolved over the past four years and explaining our plans for the future, they asked some big questions I don’t think we’d thought of before: What would you like the next five years to look like? What are your wildest dreams about where this movement of yours could go? Overwhelmed and imaginations spinning, we didn’t have immediate answers to these questions, but they definitely gave us lots to think about. Lisa and Anita also helped us work through some of the big questions we had been struggling with – Should we attempt a boys camp session? How do we get the word out about Residential Camp? Many thanks to these incredible women for their time and advice, it was very much appreciated!

It was also great to have 12 year old CSP alumna, Julia N. at the table – she helped us keep the discussion camper-focused and was wonderful at attending to the needs of Lisa’s adorable one-year old daughter (whose presence inspired us for the future)!