Back in April, our staff team went on an overnight retreat over to Bainbridge Island! We spent a lot of time doing some team building and bonding, eating delicious food, attempting to skip rocks, facilitating some workshops, had some peeps do early morning cold plunges, and wrapped it up with a feelings circle, all which helped made our team feel even more connected after.
On the first night, Hana and Ash led a facilitation on the non-profit industrial complex where we got some insight of how non-profits operate. Then, we ended the night with Ari leading a staff Jeopardy game where all of the questions were about our entire staff team’s lives – from questions ranging to some random fun facts, our Myers-Briggs personality types, to who our childhood celebrity crushes were!
On the second day, Hana and Ash led another facilitation about our 2024 report card. We got to look back on how the previous year went for all of our programs, our youth demographics, got some insight on how backend things have been running, then wrapped it up with a discussion on our finances and how they’ll impact us in the future! Afterward, we had some yummy tacos made by Ash and spent some time eating together by the water! Then, we transitioned into our feelings circle where we got to share some moments in our personal lives, and followed it by playing some card games where we ate lots and lots of Nerds gummy clusters and a huge bag of Korean fried chicken chips. Safe to say all snacks were completely demolished by the end of retreat!
Finally, on the last day, we did one more facilitation where we talked about delegating tasks and shared our excitement for projects and programs. We usually have staff retreats every year, which gives us a lot of time for team bonding and having lots of face-to-face work time, all while having a fun few days with each other! So… until the next staff retreat!