Jumpstart!

Jumpstart is a course for young leader which the Cornerstone Veritas team hosted at the Cornerstone Head Office.  It was open to anyone who wanted to attend and took place from February 19^th to 21^th. This course was facilitated by Anthony Elliot of Youth With a Mission and his team of 3 others.  It was attended by all the Cornerstone Veritas interns and the staff, as well as a number of other guests.             

 

 According to Anthony, he described this course as a personal potential discovery experience. He used a Mr. bean Clip to illustrate how a fainting man was jumped to life using an electric shock. He further explained that we may possess abilities, skills and talents but that we have not received the Jumpstart (knowledge)  we need to use them.  We need to be inspired and encouraged to maximize our potential and use what we have to live purposeful and fulfilled lives. This is what the Jumpstart course is about. 

Finding focus:

Anthony explained that when we are still young, it is very difficult to know what we want for our lives.  This specifically means that we don’t have a clear set of goals and a personal vision. Young people struggle to achieve goals because they lack clarity and direction.  However, as we grow older we should work hard to clarify our personal vision and goals for our lives. He used a dart game illustration his point about age.  3 people stood in a line; the youngest in the back, the next in age was in the middle and the oldest was closest to the dart board.   The youngest threw his dirt from far away, it did not get very close to the bullseye. But the oldest, who was nearest to the board, hit the target. The explanation was that as we get older, we gain a clearer understanding of what our life goals and vision should be.

 

 Identification of our gifts and talents:

This course also enables people to thoroughly evaluate and discover their talents and gifts. Anthony took us through an exercise that considered the talents and gift of our family members, so that we could see where we have come from and what we may have gained from our family. In the end we learned that our gifts and talents can originate from those of our family members.

We also took a series of long tests, during which we had to decide how we would behave in certain situations, and which words best describes who we are.   These tests helped us to discover our physical abilities, metal capacity, and spiritual gifting.  We also played a game where we had to move based on the answers to different questions, this helped us to get an idea of where we fall in the DISC personality test. 

  Defining your ideal motivational environment:

Jumpstart also defines the different working environments that exist and also describes the different individual characteristic which make up our personality types.  It then combines and understand of work environment and personality to help people learn their ideal motivational environment. 

Mission and Vision Statements:

Finally, the course helped each participant to use all of the information they had collected about themselves to write their personal mission and vision statement.  Each person had the chance to share creatively about their mission and vision statement, as well as create goals which will help them achieve what they have set out to do.  It was a great time to learn about how everyone is different, and were designed uniquely for a specific purpose. 

Overall, Jumpstart was a great success.  To enjoy time together, on the Wednesday during the program Noelle made us all dinner at Cornerstone and we played games.  It was a great time of laughter and fun. 

The whole Cornerstone Veritas team, as well as our guests, enjoyed the program and learned a lot from it.  We look forward to running it again next year.   

Jumpstart was great for everyone who attended!