Kristel Logghe: "Combining my passions social entrepreneurship and interculturalization with LOL!"

How it all began...

"In 2015, I led a number of pilots in different municipalities for the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment to ensure that the Youth Mental Health Service becomes more accessible to children with a migrant background. One of the pilots was for the Municipality of Rotterdam. We started with trainings for district team professionals in working in a culture-sensitive way and early detection of mental health problems and intellectual disabilities in migrant youth. Soon we wondered how we could use this "offline" training for many more district teams. And that's how I ended up at Learning Connected and learned about Live Online Learning (LOL). We set up an online school for the Municipality of Rotterdam and trained trainers to offer the trainings live online to the district teams. And that's actually how it all started."

Kristel's role in this was mainly that of project leader and networker; connecting the right people. Because she was so involved with LOL, she also wanted to follow the LOL training of Learning Connected. Meanwhile, she herself is a certified LOL trainer and since 2020 she also gives training in culturally sensitive working, diversity policy and social entrepreneurship.

Corona issues among social entrepreneurs

"In addition, I support social entrepreneurs with, among other things, coaching, their revenue model, measuring impact, and you name it. This is a very diverse target group, from care and welfare to the cultural sector and thrift stores. Since the corona outbreak I started training them myself so that they too could continue their work (live) online. In April and May, I gave the abbreviated training to LOL trainer to several groups. But with the social entrepreneurs there were also new issues related to corona, for example with the thrift shops. How do I set up my store according to the 1.5 meter economy? And how do I sell second-hand stuff online when I have to close my store? Together with the trainers I had trained, we developed some new programs for them to deal with this. Through LOL of course!"

What is the added value of LOL?

"LOL offers a significant added value. The interaction between asynchronous and synchronous learning is very valuable. In all training sessions, we always give participants preparation or interim assignments. Everyone goes into a session well prepared and in the session itself the interaction and exchange of ideas with each other and the expert is central. Take for example the recycling companies, they have so many ideas to exchange with each other in a session. You can facilitate that aspect very well through LOL. Everyone can participate in the session from their own workplace. And that just works super-fine."

How do you envision 2021?

"When I look at the developments I see that for companies inclusive working is becoming more and more important. Especially since the Black Lives Matter movement, this has attracted a lot of attention. Companies are starting to look at themselves more critically: how "inclusive" are we ourselves? And how diverse are we in our recruitment and selection processes? They are increasingly holding up a mirror to themselves and want to take action to change things. To do that, you need to give policymakers and managers tools to change the organization and culture. We therefore developed together with SE Lab a live online training for managers and policy makers on diversity policies and inclusive organizations. In late 2020, we delivered the training to a first group and in mid-January, the 2^e group. Very fun and interesting to develop that even further!"

LOL goes international!

"In addition, I am also a member of a European association that focuses on intercultural elder care. We have developed beautiful training courses that we can also translate into culturally sensitive work with older migrants. This is a very topical subject, because it is now an issue in almost all European countries. Together with colleagues from Finland and Hungary, among others, we developed an international training that we now want to offer in Europe. And that is all via LOL! Live Online Learning is an ideal method and platform to train and collaborate on a European level."

Future of LOL

"I personally think that you're going to get a lot more flexible forms of organizing and learning. Initially because of the corona crisis, but also afterwards. Not everyone will go to the office physically anymore or follow a training course on location. It's often more efficient to do that online. And especially if you have live contact with each other online. But, occasionally you will still want to see each other. We actually have to combine the advantages and disadvantages as best we can to get the best out of it. How do I envision that? For example, after an intensive training program a festive conclusion with each other in real-life. And in the training courses for the social entrepreneurs we are now also working with 'buddies', a fellow participant with whom you can collaborate during the preparations and interim assignments. Then the couples can choose for themselves whether they want to meet, or not."

"In the process, because everyone has become so used to online meetings, I notice that trainers and users are also becoming more critical of LOL and the online classroom. They have high standards, which keeps us on our toes! We get feedback from trainers who actually work with LOL in practice. Nice to see that they are so engaged with LOL, that they also become critical themselves. So we continue to develop constantly and the trainings get even better!"

 

Want to know more about Kristel's projects? Send her an email.