First of all, welcome to the team! Whether you’re the first CC in your country or you’re taking up the coordinator role in an already mature community, here’s some important first steps to get you going.

Step 1. Start with a general check-up

Before doing anything, it helps to have a clear understanding of both Climate Fresk’s current activities and those of the community of Freskers in your country:

• Take stock of the number of participants in your country, as well as the number of facilitators and what belt level they are. Do this by going to the Metrics page in your Facilitator’s space.

Step 2. Introduce yourself to the community 

Much more often than not, you’re not the only active Fresker in your country. But this can also be the case! If you’re launching your community from scratch this information won’t be relevant to you. If there are already some Freskers in your country, here’s what you should do:

• Reach out to the most active Freskers in your community, these may be orange or yellow belts Fresking publicly or privately. If you’re not sure who they are, get in contact with your International Coordinator at the association who can help you.

• Introduce yourself to the Freskers living in your country and explain your role as their Climate Fresk CC. How?

  • Build on what already exists. Ask the active Freskers in your community if they use a specific platform to communicate, and, more generally, ask what works for them before proposing something new.

  • Be humble and tactful. Some of your Freskers may have volunteered for Climate Fresk for a while and so some processes are likely to already be in place without the association being aware of it. This is totally fine!

  • Publicise your county email address. Your country@climatefresk.org inbox serves as an official, public-facing point of contact to you as CC. You can use it to answer questions from the community too, but let them know it exists! 

• Put Local Groups front and centre. The Local Groups feature in the facilitator’s space is how you can share announcements to your community all at once. Once trained, new Freskers will be told to join their Local Group to receive announcements from you about upcoming community events taking place in their area or country. This is where you come in! Find your Local Group here.

  • Go to the communication centre to learn more about the history of Local Groups

Step 3. Create room for exchange

Like we said, build on what already exists. Here’s how to get the most out of it:

• Create a routine for contacting your Freskers. 

  • For example, at the end of each month you could send out an overview of the month’s activities where you celebrate your freskers achievements, welcome new members, and share climate updates. Every first Monday of the month, you could share a plan of the month’s workshops. Do what works for you, but putting a routine in place creates a sense of regularity both for you and your Freskers. 

• Outline or choose together the rules of interaction that you wish to follow in community group chats, on Telegram, Whatsapp, or other. Group chats can be a place of debate, support, meme-sharing, and more, but it is important to outline that these are spaces free from discrimination and judgement.

Step 4: Get to know your community

Once you’ve reached out to your community, it’s time to get to know each other! We know that initiating group discussions online or in person can be intimidating sometimes, especially when you’re the one taking the lead. But we’re Freskers! And that means we love an icebreaker. 

Here’s some opening points of discussion to get kick-start conversation:

• Why is the ecological transition important to you?

• Do you feel supported or ostracised when climate change is discussed in personal and professional spaces? 

• Share your favourite climate meme.

• Share a powerful or crazy workshop story

• What do you want to bring to the CF community in your country? (I.e. to facilitate workshops in schools, help operate the county’s social media content, reach underprivileged audiences) 

Step 5: Fresk, fresk, fresk! 

Finally, it’s time to unleash the fresking potential of your community. 

And initially, the goal is to make it as easy as possible for your freskers to facilitate workshops. This may involve more hands-on support, whether it be organising workshops for new facilitators so that all they need to do is sign up as facilitator, helping them with workshop logistics, getting the cards, reserving a room, etc. We can all remember how daunting those first few workshops were! 

You may also need to translate the cards into your national language. Find out more here!

Then, as your freskers become more autonomous, you can begin to devote more time to broader community management. You can ensure that weekly or monthly fresks and trainings are taking place in different cities, that new facilitators can upskill by being paired with more experienced ‘buddy’ freskers, and by delegating certain organisational roles, such as social media promotion, to engaged members of the community. Discover more in this page. 

What if I’m launching my Climate Fresk community from scratch? 

The steps above are still important, even if there are very few active facilitators in your country. But if you're starting from scratch, you can also do the following:

• Contact your International Coordinator to help you reach out to inactive facilitators who aren’t in your Local Group or group chats. 

• Fresk as much as you can to progress in your Belt Journey. Being a Country Coordinator & a Green Belt is an enormous asset to your national community. This means that you can train the next generation of facilitators locally and accompany their integration into the national community. 

• Strongly encourage workshop participants to become facilitators themselves. Find out more here. 

• Collaborate with organisations, NGOs, social groups, etc. who are more likely to be interested in the ecological and social transition and integrate the Climate Fresk into their existing activities and services. Find out more here.

Once your community begins to grow and mature, you will soon find yourself surrounded by Freskers equally as passionate about the project as you are! And as your community grows, its wants and needs will grow too. 

This is where the establishment of a core team could really help you! That is to say, if you don't have one already. But, what is a core team?

A core team is a group of Freskers who share the organisational responsibility of organising a national Climate Fresk community. It may compose of (co-)Country Coordinators, Local Coordinators, and/or actively involved members of the community. Each individual's role and responsibilities should be clearly defined and understood by all. 

If you’re a CC currently organising your community alone, this may sound like a great idea! So let’s start from the beginning.. 

Introducing a co-CC

On your journey as Country Coordinator, you are likely to meet Freskers that also have what it takes to take on a more organisational role within the community. They may have already:

• Organised and facilitated lots of workshops

• Shown their passion and enthusiasm for the project

• Offered to help out aspects of community management outside of their individual activity, e.g. at community events, with social media promotion, local coordination 

An important part of building a strong community is recognising members for their positive contributions. So if you’re reading this and are thinking of a particular Fresker, it could be time to get them involved. 

You can send this presentation to any potential co-CCs to help you explain the basics of the CC role, the Mobilisation team’s selection process, and what support they can expect to receive from the association. 

There are a handful of prerequisites for selection that you should keep in mind however. The candidate should be:

• At least an Orange Belt, having facilitated at least 10 workshops

• Willing and able to become a trainer (Green Belt) within the next 6 months

• Enthusiastic about devoting more time to Climate Fresk’s development in your country

• Able to speak good English

• Have a clear vision for developing Climate Fresk in your country and an action plan for making this vision a reality

Other points:

• If you’re CC in a country that is not your country of origin, we would prefer to onboard a co-CC that is native to this country.  

• Sometimes, getting organisational help on the ground and quickly is a must. If you have Yellow Belts that are extremely enthusiastic, tick most of the boxes above, and will soon become an Orange Belt, you can start to discuss the prospect of them taking a more defined role within the community. 

Onboarding Local Coordinators

Coming soon!

Getting other members of the community involved

Is there a Fresker in your community who has stated their interest in helping facilitate, grow, or organise your national community? 

Is there someone who already helps out a lot that you’d like to give recognition to? 

Do you know a Fresker with a useful skill set or hobby that could benefit the broader community? 

Volunteer involvement can cover many different activities. Here’s some that you could delegate to a trusted Fresker:

• The Educator: managing partnerships with educational institutions

• The Mentor: white belt buddy

• The Influencer: workshop promotion on social media and external communications

• The Fun Fresker: organising group activities and meetups

• The Welcomer: integrating new facilitators into the broader community

• The Moderator: monitoring the community's discussion spaces

• The Carer: making sure everyone is looked after in the community

• The Specialist: coordinates a working group dedicated to understanding a particular subject better 

REMEMBER

If a member of you community agrees to taking on an organisational role in your core team, it's important to clearly define together:

• Their responsibilities

• The value they bring to the rest of the community

• The amount of time they can devote to the role each week

• The core team’s expectations

•  How you’ll communicate the evolution of the role together

Take a minute and think, when was the last time you were properly welcomed somewhere? How was it? What worked well, what not so much? 

It’s highly likely that how you were welcomed into the place or community you’re thinking about, whether it be Climate Fresk or another, had a significant impact on how you’ve engaged with and thought about it since. 

Welcoming new members into the Climate Fresk community is essential. Why?

• It sets the tone of a new Fresker’s involvement in the community from that moment forward:

  • Fostering a sense of inclusion and belonging that makes Freskers feel valued contributors to the group

  • Building both Freskers’ confidence and skills, since it serves as an opportunity to provide them with training materials, guidance, and human support

  • Encouraging engagement by fostering connections with other members
    
    

• It provides your community with strong foundations for the future:

  • Ensuring our collective mission, values, and rules of interaction are well understood

  • Saving you time and energy; an effective welcoming will produce more dynamic and autonomous.

  • Increasing the likelihood that Freskers will remain engaged with the association in the long-run.

From why to how?

So there’s the ‘why?’ Here’s some options for the ‘how?’. The feasibility of each option will depend on the size of your community, the number of new Freskers you’re welcoming, and, of course, you! Whether you call it a welcome session, an onboarding, or a Fresk get-together, integrating new Freskers into the community should be a fun experience, for you and your community.

Group welcome

There are numerous advantages of facilitating a group welcome. Straight away, you get to know your Freskers and they get to know each other. It’s a chance to have some fun together. And, of course, you get to save time. 

Here’s a list of ideas depending on how much time you have available - and how much fun you want to have! 

• The minimum. In your country’s post-training emails to all new Freskers, strongly encourage them to join your community channels (Local Group and group chat). Make it attractive and let them know there’s a community of Freskers there to support them. 

• Write a welcome post in community group chat and ask new Freskers to introduce themselves with a photo, a fun fact about themselves, and why they trained to be a facilitator.

• Record a welcome video for new Freskers of you (and your co-CC) where you introduce yourself and how your national community is organised. Being introduced to a helpful, friendly face can go a long way, even online.

• Host a video call Welcome Session every month or two. Use a presentation to help explain what Climate Fresk is and how to get involved with the national community, do a walk through of all the features in the Facilitator’s space together (really helpful), and answer any questions new Freskers may have during a Q&A at the end.

• Host an in-person gathering. This doesn’t have to be reserved for new members of the community but hosting a Climate Fresk themed gathering, whether it be a picnic, hike, coffee, tea or other, serves as a fantastic opportunity to regularly strengthen links between your community members, enriching their experience and yours. There are geographical constraints to consider if your country is large but potential actvities could include:

  • A welcome presentation introducing:

    • Community values and rules of interaction

    • How the national community is organised internally:

      • Communications from the CC

      • Co-facilitation 

      • Room bookings

      • Cards distribution

    • Icebreakers

    • Facilitation Q&A

  • Fresk get together in a local café/bar/restaurant

  • A Fresk-themed quiz (online or in-person)

  • A hike

  • A picnic in a local park

  • A mock / simulated Fresk for White Belts

Individual welcome

• A one-on-one call. If your commnity is still in the early stages of development and you have the time to meet new facilitators, this could be a nice personal touch, boosting long-term engagment and reinforcing the social links between you and your Freskers. 

• Ask new Freskers to write a profile about themselves to post in your community group chat or on your social media page, with consent of course. 

Post-welcome

Now it's to ride that momentum! The very next week after training new facilitators, it's worth doing the following:

• Share the workshop schedule in your country or in the Fresker's local area. If they're able to co-facilitate straight away, even better!

• Help White Belts facilitate their workshop (more info in the Community upskilling section)

• Calls to Action: new Freskers may be able to help out with a variety of activities taking place in your country, whether they be Working Groups or organisational roles. There could be several ways to get involved!

Check out the kits below!

Internal communication is the backbone of a successful volunteer community. It not only helps in achieving your community's shared goals but also plays a vital role in creating a supportive, inclusive, and effective environment for your Freskers. 

Tools to communicate with your national community

Social media group chat 

Unless you yourself are launching your national community, it’s highly likely that a Freskers Group already exists. Below, you’ll find several tips about how to oversee an effective, welcoming, even inspiring community group chat.

Unsure about which messaging platform to use? The benefits of using Telegram are that you can not only add your group chat to the Climate Fresk Telegram Loop database - making it easier for new facilitators to find - but you can also create individual channels within one overarching loop dedicated to specific subjects, such as, Workshops & Formations, Fresk Drinks, Meet-ups and Events.  

But if Telegram is not at all used where you are in the world and would, instead, limit Fresker engagement, you should use the communication platform that suits you and your community’s needs the most (Whatsapp, Slack, Facebook, etc.).

However, please join the Country Coordinators Telegram loop. The association often shares interesting news in this space and you can also communicate, ask questions, and share ideas with other CCs around the world.  

Local Groups

The aim of Local Groups is not to replace your community group chat, rather to bolster your internal communication by offering a portal which is integrated in the Facilitators Space and is useful for sharing the most important announcements with your community (such as upcoming workshop opportunities or events).

What are Local Groups? Read about the history of Local Group’s launch and why CCs no longer have direct access to all of their Freskers’ emails in our page dedicated to communiation tools. 

Still looking for more? Here's the value of effective communication

Below, you’ll find some reasons as to why effective communication with your community is so important and underneath each reason, you’ll find some useful tips and resources to help you.

But remember, not all of these practices will be relevant for the size of your national community, only a superhuman volunteer would be able to find the time to put all of these in place, and you may already be doing some of these things! Pick and choose which work best for you.   

1. Our common goal: alignment and clarity

Consistency in Mission:

• Regular Updates. You could schedule regular announcements, meetings, or send out a short monthly newsletter to keep your Freskers informed about the community’s mission, ongoing projects, and upcoming Fresks. This reinforces the purpose of their work, especially if you include Climate Fresk’s purpose in such communications.

Clear Instructions and Expectations:

• Task Descriptions. If you’ve been able to delegate certain community roles to Freskers, provide them (and the rest of your community) with clear descriptions of what each role entails and how they’re supporting the broader community.  

• Accessible Documentation. Use and publicise your Country Google Drive so that you Freskers can easily access guidelines, procedures, and any other information you’d like to share with them.

2. Engagement and Motivation

Building a Sense of Belonging:

• Personalised Communication. If they consent, address Freskers by their names and acknowledge their specific contributions in communications to make them feel valued.

• Community Building Activities. Use your internal communication channels to try and work out how best to organise virtual or in-person social events. Some Freskers may be interested in coffee chats and team-building exercises, but others may enjoy events around climate education, improving their skills, or watching Fresk Talks. Send out a poll and find out!

Recognition and Feedback:

• Shoutouts. Publicly recognise volunteers in meetings, newsletters, or social media posts for their contributions.

• Constructive Feedback. Offer constructive feedback privately, focusing on both strengths and areas for improvement. Make it a two-way conversation to encourage openness.

3. Coordination and Collaboration

Managing projects:

• Shared Project Management Tools: Tools like Trello, Asana, or Slack can help track tasks, assign responsibilities, and set deadlines. This keeps everyone on the same page if you’re planning an ambitious project!.

Encouraging Collaboration:

• Foster Open Communication. Try and make your community’s communication channels a space where Freskers can discuss ideas, share resources, and collaborate on projects.

• Pairing buddies! You can use your communication channels to help pair new facilitators with experienced Freskers. 

4. Conflict Resolution

Addressing Issues Proactively:

• Open-Door Policy. Feel free to encourage volunteers to voice concerns early by ensuring they know you are approachable and available to listen.

• Anonymous Feedback. Providing a way for Freskers to submit feedback or report issues anonymously can help identify problems that may not be voiced openly.

Maintaining Harmony:

• Set Communication Norms. Establish guidelines for respectful, constructive, and non-violent communication. You could remind your Freskers to assume good intent and approach disagreements with a collaborative mindset when appropriate.

• Mediation. If conflicts arise, mediate promptly. Ensure that both sides are heard and work towards a solution that respects everyone’s views and contributions.

For a more complete guide to resolving conflicts should they arrive inside the community, check out the Conflict Resolution Network’s free training materials and self-study guide on conflict resolution. 

5. Building Trust and Transparency

Fostering Trust:

• Open Communication Channels. Encourage open communication by regularly seeking volunteer input and acting on feedback. Be transparent about decisions and actions.

• Consistency. Be consistent in your communication and actions. Scheduling bi-weekly messages is a great way to do this. Follow through on promises and commitments to build credibility and trust.

Encouraging Openness:

• Ask for Feedback. Solicit feedback on the communication process itself. Are your Freskers feeling informed?

• Inclusive Decision-Making. Involve volunteers in decision-making processes where appropriate, especially in areas that directly affect their work. Here’s a short guide to consensus decision-making.

6. Sustaining Long-Term Involvement

Fresker Retention:

Regular Check-ins. When the opportunity arises, ideally during community meet-ups or online calls, try to understand how Freskers are feeling about their roles and address any concerns or challenges they may have.

Growth Opportunities. Use your communication channels to share any training or opportunities to develop new skills that you find or that are shared by Climate Fresk. This keeps their facilitator experience enriching and helps Freskers feel valued.

Continuity and Legacy:

Document Processes. Encourage active Freskers to document their work and share their experiences, creating a resource for future volunteers.

Buddy systems. yup, this little gem again… find out more here. 

Ok, so you’ve laid the foundations for the growth of your community. Now it’s time to upskill. As a Country Coordinator, it’s unlikely that you’re a paid climate expert. But that’s the beauty of Climate Fresk! 

In combining your expertise as an Orange, Green, or Blue Belt with all the collective expertise of your community, and the tools and resources at your disposal in the Facilitator’s Space and CC Hub, it should be a walk in the park helping your Freskers improve their climate knowledge and facilitating skills. 

Here’s some quick ideas to try out that shouldn’t take too much time or energy. 

6 Tips for upskilling your community

1. Put community upskilling at the heart of your community events. Use this theme as an opportunity to both upskill your Freskers and build stronger links beteen them.

2. Share Fresk Talks (Fresqu’onférences) with your community. You can even watch them together. Our recent Fresk Talk with George Marshall about how to talk to different audiences about climate change is a MUST SEE! 

3. Use the collaborative regional database to share resources relevant to your country or region.

4. Organise an Expert Climate Fresk! Find the cards here.

5. Share resources you think your Freskers will find useful if they want to go further. You’ll find plenty of interesting resources here in the CC Hub.

6. Fresk, Fresk, Fresk! Help your freskers facilitate as much as possible to improve their skills.

Mobilising your White Belts

Many White Belts never dare facilitating their first workshop. 😥 

The ability of a Country Coordinator, therefore, to support and guide White Belts in passing to action and facilitating their first workshop is a real game changer.

What you can do:

Welcome new facilitators. Once you, or another Green Belt in your country, has facilitated a training session, send your new Freskers a post-training email, which:

• • Lays out the steps to facilitating their first workshop in a way that is clear, helpful, and doesn’t make it seem more intimidating than it should be. 

    • The first step is always to activate their account and the last step is always to fill in the counter! 

  • Introduce them to your community’s discussion groups, i.e. Local Groups, Telegram or Whatsapp group chat, etc, and inform them of what type of communications they can expect to receive on each. 

  • Highlight all the resources available to them to improve their facilitation skills and climate knowledge

    • MOOC, training slides, online facilitation guide, etc. 

  • Create room for exchange. Ask them what may be blocking them or what they’re worried about when it comes to running their first workshop.

  • Ask them to add their name to a Buddy List. see below and find useful external resources here.

Set up a Buddy System. Pairing new facilitators with experienced Freskers in your community is an extremely effective way to both support White Belts in (co)facilitating their first workshop and introduce them to other members of your community. More info can be found here. 

Support them yourself, logistically and organisationally. If there aren’t enough experienced Freskers in your community, you could:

• Allow White Belts to co-facilitate public workshops with you.

• Create a space among White Belts so that they can co-facilitate their first workshop all together.

• Offer more hands-on logistical or organisational support. You may set up a monthly workshop to be facilitated by members of the community where the room is already booked and a lot of the workshop promotion is already done.

Direct them towards the NGO’s New Facilitator Welcome Sessions. On the last Wednesday of every month, the association hosts two welcome sessions for new facilitators during which we walk through all of the features in the facilitator’s space together and answer any questions new facilitators may have. Find the calendar here. 

If you’re feeling super enthusiastic and have enough Freskers to welcome, you could do something similar on the national level. And make it fun! You could devote some time to the platform, some to upskilling, some to games, and some to simply socialising and getting to know each other! Be as creative as you like. 

Check out the resources found in the to go further page.