So, maybe you’ve just been onboarded as Country Coordinator. If so, welcome to the CC community! 

The first thing to do is to go and check out our first 5 steps for a new CC here. You’ve done that? Great.
Quick fire quiz. What is the 5th and final step? Answer: Fresk, fresk, fresk! 

Before becoming a CC, you probably organised workshops mainly on your own. And while organising and facilitating workshops is still an important part of your new role, especially if you’re on the path to becoming a Green Belt, more of your fresking energy should now go towards unleashing the facilitating potential of your community than before. 

Here’s some ideas about how to channel that energy. 

Find the perfect spot! 

It’s time to go in search of a Fresker’s paradise: a free venue which can offer regular workshops for your community of facilitators. Here are some suggestions for finding spaces at no cost:

• Environmentally focused NGOs and organisations

• Cultural centres: they often seek events to enrich their programs

• Community spaces like coffee shops, village halls, and museums

• Libraries with separate meeting rooms

• Universities and schools

• Bars of cafés which may aren't too busy during the week 

Need to rent a venue? 

It shouldn't be too challenging finding a free spot. If you having real trouble though, the association can try to assist with renting a location for your public workshops. Just remember that reimbursement from the association isn’t always guaranteed. Before spending any money, make sure to check the reimbursement process here first.

Consistent workshop organisation. 

Try and book this space once, twice, even three times a month!... depending on the number of active Freskers in your community and their ability to consistently find participants. 

When new facilitators come to you and they are unsure about how to organise the logistics of a workshop, having a room, as well as pre-organised workshops, makes their first workshop or two that little bit easier. 

Encourage Freskers to help each other. 

Encouraging both co-facilitating and observing in your community are fantastic ways, no matter its size, to get your Freskers feeling more comfortable facilitating Climate Fresks. Plus, by encouraging in-person meetings, the seeds of your community will grow even faster!

Don’t forget to register your event! 

It’s the first line of the Holy Book of Fresking. Fill your counter! 

As a Country Coordinator, it’s crucial that you scream this message from the rooftops to your community. It can be repetitive but it’s so important that you ensure and check that your Freskers register their participants after each workshop.

Why? The counter is crucial for both the association (for financial tracking, our overall metrics, and for visibility of Freskers’ experience when workshop opportunities emerge in various parts of the world) and for Freskers (ensuring that their volunteer work is acknowledged, they can progress in their Fresker’s journey and that they profit from the benefits that brings).

We know you probably have a tonne of great ideas for attracting participants already and we welcome them all. But if you need a little extra inspiration, here are some tips to guide you and your community:

1. Leverage your personal network

Start by tapping into your personal connections. Inform your family, friends, and colleagues about the workshop, and share it on your social media platforms. Find out more about using social media here.

2. Social media

It’s not everyone’s favourite activity, but social media should be a central part of your community's workshop promotion. We’ve created a full Social Media Communication Guide, but here’s a few quick tips:

• Use the eye catching social media templates created by the Climate Fresk communications team

• Use the Event feature in apps like LinkedIn and Instagram to make it easy for potential participants to sign up

• Delegate social media management to engaged members of your community who want to contribute further to the national community

• Schedule regular posts once or twice a month promoting the workshops taking place in your country

• Post-workshop promotion. After the workshop, encourage participants to spread the word within their networks. Capture the Fresk by taking photos (with consent) and sharing them on social media. Don’t forget to celebrate the efforts of facilitators and organisers, and acknowledge milestones in order to build momentum

• Collaborate with like-minded social media groups or individuals with a bigger following to repost your posts (e.g. zero waste groups, the local recycling volunteer group). But be careful not to overdo it so as not to be considered a spammer!

3. Connect with local environment-friendly organisations

Reach out to local (and national) environmental and social organisations and NGOs. Engage with their communities, attend their events, and then introduce the Climate Fresk workshop. 

Approach this with humility, understanding that these groups might have their own preferred methods of taking action. Collect email addresses for follow-up communication.

4. Tap into existing communities 

Try to take advantage of pre-existing, well established communities that already meet on a regular basis. These types of groups are either actively looking or at least open to new activities to add to their weekly/monthly program of events. 

Whether it be schools and student networks, foreign language speaking groups, or international organisations like Rotary, the members, volunteers, and organisers of these groups may be interested in adding some Fresk-flavoured variety to their calendar. 

By including members in the organisation and promotion of your event, you’ll likely be reaching an even greater audience and their personal investment may lead to more participants training to become facilitators themselves.  

5. What’s in the news?

Use what is happening around the world or in your country to frame your communication. It could be the next COP, an extreme weather event, or the release of a positive piece of research or government legislation. 

This relevance can attract more participants who are passionate about these issues. If you have the time, you can also plan events around special days, like Earth Day.

6. Promote at Fairs and Social Events

Participate in conferences, fairs, and social events in your city or country. Try to set up a booth where you can present the workshop, explain its purpose, and engage attendees in interactive ways, such as with the Fresk Quiz! 

If you have an upcoming session, create a QR code for easy registration on the spot. You can find more information about representing Climate Fresk at events here.

7. Minimising No-Shows

By communicating the importance of your participants’ attendance beforehand - emphasising for example that the workshop requires a minimum of four participants to take place - helps to ensure that everyone understands their role in making the workshop a successful one. 

We also know that there are less no shows when participants pay to take part in the workshop. This isn't appropriate in all contexts but charging a small price for workshop participation can better reflect the value of both the workshop and volunteers' facilitation time.

8. Build your network as a Climate Fresk spokesperson 

As Country Coordinator, you are entitled to represent Climate Fresk in a formal capacity. Make the most of this title by approaching organisations with the intention of collaborating with them. Find out more here.

What if I’m still an Orange Belt?

If you’re a Country Coordinator and still an Orange Belt, we have asked you to set out a plan to progress to a Green Belt as soon as possible, ideally 6 months after becoming a CC. This is essential, so read more about the importance of your journey to becoming a trainer below. 

But in the meantime, if you’ve identified enthusiastic participants in your community who want to become facilitators, you have the following 3 options:

Option 1. There are no other trainers in your country 

• Redirect the participants to this Climate Fresk web page, which shows all scheduled trainings.

• If there are no suitable sessions because of languages or timezones:

  • Try to contact a trainer in a neighbouring country, or one which shares the same language and explain the situation. Use the Fresker’s Directory to do so. 

  • Ask your international coordinator to see if there’s another solution.

Option 2. There’s another Green Belt in your country

• If you’ve found another Green Belt in your country thanks to the Directory, contact the person to check if they would be willing to organise a specific session to help grow the national community.

Option 3. The suggestions above weren’t successful, which means… Get that Green Belt A.S.A.P! 

• Having a Green Belt (trainer) on the ground, ideally you the CC, is an enormous asset to the growth of your national community. 

The value of progressing in your Fresker's journey.

• You can organise regular training sessions for wannabe Freskers at will, meaning you have more influence over the growth of your community.

• You're more able to oversee personally who is becoming a facilitator in your country.

• Whether you’re training them online or in person, you’ll have the chance to meet and talk to them, ask them to join your Local Group and group chats directly, and integrate them into the community in explaining how it’s run. 

• This serves to be extremely useful when it comes to building and effectively managing your national collective of Freskers

So, click here (EN) and here (FR) to find all the information you need about progressing in your Fresker’s Journey and becoming a Green Belt A.S.A.P!

Are you already a Green Belt? 

Congratulations! It's take a lot work, we know. Read on for more useful tips.

Coming soon: International Green Circle

Strategy

Target potential facilitators early

Focus on organising workshops for individuals who might be interested in becoming facilitators. This could be for climate activists or people who already have facilitation skills, such as teachers, nonprofit and community leaders, and project managers.

Post-workshop

Make sure that you and your Freskers’ post-workshop emails reinforce and remind the participants of the powerful experience they shared during their workshop. 

Share with them the moments you found most inspiring, add photos of the team’s Fresk, answer the questions they couldn't answer, and make sure it’s clear that becoming a Fresker is an incredible way to take action. 

3 key messages

1. ‘You don’t have to be an expert on climate change to be a Climate Fresk facilitator’

This is an important message. For many of us, the beauty of the Climate Fresk project lies in its simplicity. Anyone can become a Fresker. So make this point clear to your workshop participants. Talk positively, yet sincerely, about your Climate Fresk experience, the values the project holds dear, and the community of like minded people we want to build. 

2. Being a facilitator is being part of a community

Relay that the Climate Fresk community is a caring community of passionate climate educators, pioneers of the ecological and social transition. 

It’s a community open to all, guided by the values of cooperation, respect for individuals, inclusivity and transparency, and one which seeks to learn and grow together. You can take examples from previous community projects, like those surrounding COPs, or share photos and stories about actions and events in your national community.

3. The enormous influence you can have on others

We know that knowledge is power, but that's not all. Learning from each other's actions and behaviours is central to our evolution. Recent research quantifies this impact and has shown that social comparisons, i.e. how people are affected by other people’s behaviours and opinions, have the largest impact on others’ pro-environmental behaviours. 

You can say to participants that:

“By facilitating workshops for your friends, family, and colleagues, you can have an enormously positive impact, because it shows them that behavioural change in the people who they care for or identify with is possible and desirable. By comparing themselves to you, you’re setting an example, the effects of which can be great.”

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?’, all depending on the size of your community and the number of new Freskers you’re welcoming.

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 here)

• 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!