When individuals are busy, overwhelmed, tired, stressed or feeling a onslaught of emotions, self-care is easy to let slide. This happens to everyone and isn’t exclusive to simply educators or volunteers. It happens to parents, teenagers and most everyone we know… especially during a global pandemic. AFS-USA has created the Global Self-Care Checklist to encourage everyone to take a moment and remember that they will need to take care of themselves in order to care for others.
This tool can be used as an outreach tool with schools as well as a volunteer engagement tool in your local teams. There are no dates on this image, so it can absolutely be used throughout the year, especially during pandemic times. Below are some ideas to help you use this tool for some global, self-care fun! No matter how you choose to use this, make sure to encourage social media participation by having everyone use the hashtag #afsglobalwellness.
Click below to view a larger image and download a PDF of the checklist. A black and white version can be found here.
For and among Volunteers
- Consider using this checklist as an annual Countdown to International Education Week. IEW happens the last full week before Thanksgiving each year, so start 23 days before that when you set your start date with your area team!
- Use this as a “challenge” with some sort of global prize or drawing for your volunteers who complete all 23 activities and post to social media with their photo evidence!
- Use this is a host family engagement activity by getting host families to divide and conquer the tasks and celebrate/recognize those families who complete the entire checklist during a designated period of time.
- Divide the ideas up and use them with ~ 2 tasks per month to keep your volunteers or host families engaged and posting to social media.
- Encourage liaisons to partner with their hosted students to do some of these activities together during their meet-ups throughout the year.
For and with Educators
- Send the PDF version of this checklist to an AFS Champion at the local school and encourage the educator to use this with the students in their classroom or as a grade level, department, or schoolwide challenge.
- Print a copy of the self-care checklist and send it to an educator with a thank you card or an AFS card to let them know that their efforts are appreciated.
- If you have strong relationships with educators in two schools, consider a school v. school challenge and provide an AFS prize to the winning school.
- When you have a school that wants to participate in this with you, help them get publicity with it by notifying the local paper and sharing their positive images/posts on social media!
Feel free to share additional ideas with us at AskAFS@afsusa.org or post them in the School Outreach group on Workplace!