FSA Leaders Camp 2015 Day 1

It was a long weekend in the Philippines for the celebration of the country’s Independence Day and the MozillaPH Community thought of the best way to celebrate it— by training our young leaders! MozPH brings back the FSA Leaders Camp 2015 which was first held in 2013. This time, the camp was held just in time for the start of the academic year of most schools. The participants were elected/ appointed Club Leads for the new academic year and we also had aspiring Club Leads who went under an application process to qualify for a slot in the camp. There were 19 participants from 18 different schools in the Philippines.

The camp was held in Batangas, overlooking the Taal Lake, to ensure that our participants are away from the hustle of the city to ensure that the environment is conducive for our intensive learning sessions and also our physical activities as well.

We started with our introductions, ice breakers and orientation about the event. A lot of these FSAs, being students from different schools, don’t know each other, so we were off to a very awkward start!

The awkwardness quickly faded however, as we did our warm-up activities which includes playing the ‘Boat is Sinking’ game to form their groups. They started to interact more when they created their group name, cheer and badge.

For this camp, we gave out equal amount of ‘MozMoney’ to each group. For all the activities and games, each group, MozMoney will be awarded as a prize or taken away as a penalty.

We moved on to the information overload afterwards, starting with an introduction to Mozilla and the Mozilla Philippines Community. We talked about the Mozilla mission, its products, its community and how they can get more involved.

Mozilla Rep Bob Reyes talked about Firefox and what’s new with it.

Mozilla Rep Tina Verbo proceeded to discuss Mozilla’s education initiatives, the highlight of which is the Webmaker project.

Ryan Ermita, also a Mozilla Rep, then discussed Firefox OS.

Mozilla Rep Joell Lapitan also discussed and demonstrated the Firefox Dev Tools available in the Firefox Developer Edition.

After the information overload afternoon, we then put their understanding and memory to the test with our next game, a pass-the-message game with a twist! The facilitators will ask a question to a member and it will be his responsibility to pass it on, taking into consideration the handicap of each member.

Upon finishing the game where each group either lost a lot of money or gained a lot we proceeded to a quick discussion on how to speak in public and how to plan your projects.

And finally, a review to brush up their knowledge about the FSA program, including important updates regarding the restructure that happened in 2014.

We immediately applied what we have learned as we did a short project planning session with the groups. They have to think of a project, its creation process, and all the requirements needed to make it happen. They were coached by our FSA alumni and Regional Ambassador Leads (RAL)

Afterwards, each group presented their work.

After the intense afternoon of information overload, we started to transition to the lighter side of our camp, starting with the evening plenary where we talked about how leadership at Mozilla works and who are the key people that they have to know as an FSA. We showed the video of Mark Surman’s talk at Portland where he called to Mozillians to make use of our sling again, to make the FSAs feel their role as part of the Mozilla community. We also showed a personal video message from none other than the FSA Community Manager herself, TJ Lee, where she called on to FSAs to turn challenges to opportunities, emphasized their relevance to the community and ended it with a “Mahal ko kayo” as a MozLovebomb! After the videos, the facilitators took time to share their Mozilla stories to the group and assisted them in formulating their commitment statements. Our minds (and hearts) were completely exhausted this day and of course, the best way to end it is with a LIP SYNC BATTLE! Each group had to pick two songs from our playlist via draw lots. We sure revealed the quirky side of everyone with this activity.