Various training courses and activities have been made available for the Team Leaders of the WYD Lisbon 2023 Volunteers over the past year. Three months ago the second edition of the Boot Camp took place at the headquarters of the WYD Lisbon 2023 Foundation.

Volunteers and Team Leaders will both be serving pilgrims at WYD Lisbon 2023, so preparation is key to ensure they are able to fulfil their mission.

“It is important that the Team Leaders get involved as early as possible, so that they may get to know the WYD very well”, said Pedro Viana, of the Reception and Volunteering Department of the Local Organising Committee (LOC).

Training courses for the Team Leaders began on 22 January 2022, with a face-to-face meeting at Lisbon Cathedral, where the “I am WYD” training programme was presented. There have been, following this first contact, monthly online meetings for all, and then an e-learning platform was launched in October.

A training module is launched every fortnight on this platform, and supplementary material is made available on each topic. The training is compulsory and the Team Leaders have to answer a quiz at the end of each module, only being allowed to advance if the module is completed. It is expected that the training for volunteers will start at the beginning of 2023, since registrations only opened in October.

The training of Volunteers and Team Leaders is essential for them to be able to perform their duties in the best possible manner, since the tools provided allow “volunteers to get to know the event and the organisation, the task they are given, how they should perform it and meet the other volunteers with whom they team up”, said Pedro Viana.

Boot Camps are also an example of preparation. As well as having contact with some real situations of a volunteer’s tasks, through practical cases solved as a team, they are also a way to publicize the LOC and the organisation of WYD Lisbon 2023. Pedro Viana also mentioned the importance of “creating an atmosphere of friendship and sharing among volunteers and to remember the important spiritual dimension of WYD: an encounter with the Pope and with Christ”.

We had the first Boot Camp in July, which brought together, in Lisbon, about 150 team leaders of volunteers from all over the country. The second edition was held in September. More Boot Camps are expected to be held in the first half of 2023, which will have a similar training structure.

You can review what happened during the second edition of the Team Leaders Boot Camp here: