Bridging the Gap - United Way

What does building with LEGO® bricks have to do with helping an organization focus on its community driven goals?

More than you might think!

I was honoured to be asked to facilitate a series of activities for the United Way board retreat in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The United Way is an amazing not for profit community organization. It has the challenging mandate of improving the lives of the underprivileged and building strong communities with the help of volunteers and local businesses.

The Goal

In our conversations, it was expressed that due to additional stressors on the community this year, they really wanted the board to be open to any ideas that could help them make the leap into strategies that may incur more risk. They would need to employ thinking way outside the box to tackle these new challenges. After a long and productive conversation with the activity coordinator, we came up with some targeted activities that would accomplish those ends.

The Build Up

The board members were fully engaged with those activities and came up with some very clever solutions to the challenges we set out. It all culminated in building a four foot long LEGO® bridge built in a half hour which held two dozen eggs! They definitely thought way outside the box, by even using the LEGO® boxes as supports. A brilliant use of the resources they had available to them. There were smiles a plenty around the room and lots of free flowing creative thinking to prepare them for the rest of the day’s serious discussions.

The Breakdown

This team was an absolute joy to work with. Seeing how well they performed together and used what resources they had available to them to overcome these LEGO® challenges, I am sure they will be very successful in tackling the much more important task of Bridging the Gap in 2023.