In a world with ever-growing complexity, sustainable solutions can only emerge from successful collaboration.

Overall, this course aims to support you to set your relationships for collaboration, even in difficult situations. Collaboration requires having the capacity to turn inward, tune into one’s own mindset and needs for self-care as well as the capacity to turn outwards by entering productive dialogue and create support systems to effectively function as a team to address the challenges of highly complex and fast changing environments (such as conflict and post-conflict settings). At UNITAR we are working towards creating a series of online and face to face offerings to enable change agents, humanitarian workers and other helpers to increase their inner wellbeing so that they contribute to a better and more peaceful world in a more effective and sustainable way.

This course is the second of the series. As you have cared so much for others, let us join you on the journey of taking care of yourself!

Objective

This short, self-paced course enables learners to identify various types of stress and recognize the signs within themselves. Using various tests and self-diagnostic tools, learners will be able to raise their awareness about their stress levels. This is the first step towards dealing with stress in their daily and working life. The course also provides a few helpful tools to manage stress on a daily basis.

By the end of the course, learners will be able to

• Identify the benefits and challenges of collaboration;
• Identify within oneself what blocks collaboration;
• List collaborative mindset principles;
• Conduct a process to shift from defensiveness to collaborative mindset;
• Practice self-empathy.

Content and Structure

The course starts out with establishing a basic frame for collaboration, outlining key principles of the collaborative mindset. This is followed by a series of reflections to identify what blocks the individual from entering such collaborative mindset. Furthermore, using key principles of Nonviolent Communication, a process will be introduced on how to bridge the collaboration gap. Finally, an exercise on practicing self-empathy will be shared with the participants, so that in times of stress, overwhelm, reactivity or disconnection they will be able to reconnect to a collaborative mindset.**

Target Audience

This course is relevant to people working in various settings that require collaboration. The course is especially useful for people working in difficult contexts, such as conflict and post-conflict environments or people working on social causes.