Children‘s Aid’s 2023 Team Building Staff Summit

900

Attendees

200

Meter Track

80

Teams

1

Full-Day Event

A Meaningful Cause

Team building is an important endeavor in any organization. When a team functions as a unit, combining their strengths and working together, their company is proven to thrive and flourish.

When Children’s Aid Society of New York City asked us to hold a team building event for their staff, we were all in. For any team, working together is important, but especially in an organization like theirs.

The Children’s Aid Society is one of America’s oldest, as well as largest, children’s welfare nonprofits. For over 150 years, Children’s Aid has worked to ensure that every vulnerable child in New York City can prosper and be given the opportunity they need.

We feel, just as they do, that a strong, interconnected team is a vital part of ensuring their mission continues to thrive.

Unique Team Building Challenges

This team building day would utilize some of our unique tools specialized for indoor team building events.

The event, their staff summit of 2023, would be held at the Armory Track in New York, whose mission of making fitness available to every child compliments Children’s Aid’s goals in a wonderful way.

This staff summit would include our Quickfire Olympics exercise, with the scores being displayed on the massive scoreboard for everyone to see in real time!

Our Quickfire Olympics is an app-based team building event, where teams are challenged to complete as many quick challenges as they can in a set time frame. The team who rakes in the most points, for completing the most challenges, wins.

This event is played with the use of a tablet, which we bring into team building days already set up. The event begins with an ice-breaking group selfie on the tablet, after which the challenges begin.

One Exciting Staff Summit

In the Quickfire Olympics, teams swipe through the challenge options, divided into groups of active, mental, and creative, some of which require teams of two or three to complete. Other challenges require one group to collaborate with a separate team.

Through these exercises, employees are encouraged to shape their leadership, collaborative skills, and focus on team effort. So, too, do the challenges begin to showcase individuals’ hidden skills, be they creative, physical, or mental. The challenges get progressively more difficult, but the points increase for them as well.

This staff summit would be a full-day event, full of not only these exciting team challenges, but plenty of important presentations and discussions alike.

Children’s Aid asked us to bring in some local food trucks for breakfast, to start off the event with a shared meal. So, too, would lunch be provided alongside plenty of time for staff to mingle, network, and foster further connections with each other.

Let the Games Begin!

The staff summit began with breakfast running from 7:30 to 9:00 that morning. In full, we had 900 guests at this event.

The crowd was bustling, energetic, and lively. We felt they were already ready for this exciting day. Once the attendees had finished their meal, they were ushered inside the track, where this team building day was set to begin.

After an opening speech from Children’s Aid’s president and CEO as well as a brief role call, the game was on!

Our crew took the stage to give the attendees a brief rundown on how to use the Quickfire Olympics app. Once the introductory selfie had been taken, and teams chose which challenges to complete, the fun really began.

The whole track ignited, full of movement and chatter. It was a sight to behold, seeing this event spring to life in such an awesome way.

Pumping Up the Crowd

We felt Children’s Aid was onto something, beginning this event with a flurry of movement, excitement, and motion. By injecting this energy into the event from the get-go, it was guaranteed the rest of the event would carry the same momentum.

They wanted their staff to be energized, body and mind, for the rest of the day, enabling them to better take part in the table discussions and presentations. We felt that was the perfect move: beginning the day with physical activity to ignite the minds of the group and get them ready to take part.

The challenges were a huge hit, as we’d hoped they would be.

We saw the team discovering their own and each other’s strengths, talents, voices, and skills. They took to teamwork as well as leadership like a fish to water. Once the hour was up, we felt they’d grown stronger together, just as Children’s Aid had hoped they would.

While the points were immediately calculated, at day’s end, there would be an Olympic medal ceremony, and Children’s Aid had brought in some truly special prizes for their team.

Medals & Meaningful Discussion

The gold medalists of the challenge would be presented with a premium award, etched with the Children’s Aid logo, that could also function as a wireless charger.

The silver medalists would be gifted a branded computer backpack, with the company’s logo printed in white print on its black surface.

Bronze medalists would be presented with an amazing travel power kit, with branded quick-charging wall plugs, phone stands, cables, and a sleek travel case containing it all.

The day was full of thoughtful presentations, group discussions, and plenty of mingling and networking. We could tell each member of staff, from the directors giving their presentations, to the employees attending the event, were passionate about their organization’s mission.

As the day’s end drew near, we could tell this staff summit had been a success. Thought-provoking discussions as well as teamwork and homing their skill sets, we knew, would prove to be influential. We felt this staff summit had gone exactly the way Children’s Aid had hoped.

Teamwork Can Change the World

Once the Quickfire Olympics prizes had been given out, Children’s Aid presented their 2023 Longevity Awards to their team.

Following this, a video montage as well as photo opportunities drew the staff summit to a close.

The smiles on everyone’s faces and the way they interacted proved to us we’d done our job well.

Children’s Aid’s team would return to their workplaces even stronger and closer than before.

And, like Children’s Aid knew, we knew this would enable each member to carry on their mission of helping future generations grow equally strong, making the world a better place for all.

Want to plan an event like this? Contact us below (and see our team building Olympic ideas) to get started.