Juggling Icebreaker at Shanghai Sunrise

In November 2009, the Team Building Asia supported Shanghai Sunrise during their annual Pairing Ceremony at the Hilton Hotel. This ceremony is an important event as it is the first time students meet the people who will help change their lives through an educational sponsorship.

During the ceremony, TBA helped students and sponsors break the ice by engaging them in a fun juggling session known as the Juggling Motivator. Students and sponsors got to coach each other through the learning process and it wasn’t long before peals of laughter echoed through the room.

As they succeed in juggling one ball, then two and finally three, students start to build self-confidence. Coaching their sponsors as well as each other helps to build their self-esteem. Encouraging them to increase the number of throws helps to build perseverance and motivation.

As the session progressed, the students’ self-confidence increased proportionately as each of them advanced successfully from juggling one ball, to finally three balls concurrently. The aim was to strengthen their perseverance and motivation by encouraging them to increase the number of throws. In between helping their peers and coaching their sponsors, the activity also hugely boosted the students’ self-esteem.

At the end of the one-hour session, everyone got to take home the juggling balls as well as a new skill. Best of all, now sponsors and student have something in common to share and develop as they continue building their relationship.

It was an extremely rewarding experience for the TBA team to participate in this event. We certainly look forward to a further collaboration of similar nature with Shanghai Sunrise, and other charitable organizations in the future; either as a sponsor or by linking the charities with corporate groups though mutually beneficial team building events.

“We welcomed over 140 new Sunrise students and 50 sponsor representatives, marking the start of many new sponsor relationships. The workshop helped so much to facilitate this first meeting. It was great to see so many smiles and hear so much laughter. Both the students and sponsors had a lot of fun; the ice was well and truly broken!”