Our first fruitful cooperation with GIZ SRIP took place in Dahab, a small town and formerly a Bedouin fishing village on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. During the first day several team building exercises like "Scanvenger Hunt" took place and created an opportunity for the collegues to get to know each other in a different context.
During the second day, we implemented the simulation game “Transolvia”. This simulation game focuses on the role of civil society. The scenario takes place on the fictional Mediterranean island named Transolvia. Recently local politics have been heavily influenced by two developments. Firstly, the EU has established a trust to support democracy and stability in Transolvia. Secondly, a grassroot movement called BASTA emerged, that is organizing public protests and is gaining more and more popularity by the citizens of Transolvia.
This simulation game proofs to be a great fit for a team building workshop most of all because it is fun! Furthermore, the simulation game helps participants to understand conflict issues and dynamics and discuss possible (re-)actions. However, it goes beyond this, as the participants had to make decisions by themselves and experience the effect of decisions by others. The method thereby allowed to experiment with social behavior and different positions on issues in a pre-defined setting. During the evaluation phase, participants reflected upon their own behavior and role in this specific conflict environment and exchanged their point of view on the developments of the game. The participants had a better understanding of team conflict dynamics and their own role. Our traffic-light evaluation method supported them to review those processes, analyze the dynamics and draw conclusion on their role within the conflict transformation.
