Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

10 Travel Would You Rather Questions

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Would You Rather QuestionsEvery week, we’re publishing lists of Would You Rather questions with different themes – you can check out all the questions in the series here.

This week, all the questions relate to travel and the wider world. Beneath the list, we’ve also given some suggestions of some other youth group activities you can use that will tie in to this travel / global theme.

10 Travel Would You Rather Questions

Would you rather…

  1. have a two week vacation on a remote island or go on a cruise?
  2. climb Mt Everest or walk the entire length of the Great Wall Of China?
  3. eat a curry in India or pasta in Italy?
  4. take a train in India or a bus in South America?
  5. go on a safari in Africa or kayaking in Antarctica?
  6. travel by camel or elephant?
  7. see mountain gorillas in the wild in Rwanda or go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia?
  8. go to Paris for Valentine’s Day or the North Pole for Christmas?
  9. visit Japan or Brazil?
  10. travel across the US from east to west by train or by car?

Discussions / Activities

501 Would You Rather Questions
Get the book – 501 Would You Rather Questions

These questions are a great icebreaker to use when planning some youth group activities that encourage your young people to be globally minded (here’s why that’s important).

To help with your planning, here are some different resources, ideas, activities and games you can use when planning this type of youth work session:

If you liked these questions and ideas, check out all the other Would You Rather questions in this series.

Question: What other travel / global youth group activities would be good for using with these questions? And what other travel-themed questions can you think of? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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Live Below The Line – Youth Group Activities

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Live Below The Line Youth Group Activities
Breakfast on a $1.50 daily budget

Live Below The Line is a global campaign that seeks to both raise awareness about extreme poverty and raise money in order to make a difference for people living in that situation.

This week’s session plan idea therefore has some ideas for youth group activities to take part in this campaign.

What’s involved?

Extreme poverty is currently defined as having to live on $1.50 a day. The Live Below The Line campaign therefore encourages people to spend five days living on $1.50 a day, so a total of $7.50 over the course of the five days.

Although this would normally include all costs like housing, clothing, transport, etc, for the purpose of the campaign participants only have to restrict their $1.50 spending to food and drink.

The US part of the campaign is being run from April 29 to May 3 2013, but if this doesn’t provide enough time to prepare the following activities, your youth group could always participate during another 5 day period.

So here are some suggested youth group activities to help your young people have a more tangible appreciation for what life is like when living on such a small amount of money.

Activity 1 – Video

Watch a video which explains a little more about Live Below The Line. We’ve embedded one below featuring Hugh Jackman, but there are many more featuring Sophia Bush, Josh Groban and others.

n.b. This video is aimed at Australians, so gives the figure as $2 which is the Australian Dollar equivalent.

Activity 2 – Meal Planning

Sit down with your youth and plan out some meals that they might be able to afford on a $1.50 a day budget

To prepare for this, go to a grocery store and price out various staple foods and ingredients. Make a note of the:

  • Price per package
  • Weight of package
  • Portion size

This will enable you to calculate the cost per portion in advance. Create a worksheet with all the portion size prices so that the young people can pick and choose the different ingredients they need for each meal.

Here are some suggestions for food items to include:

  • Pasta
  • Rice
  • Baked potatoes
  • Bananas
  • Breakfast cereal
  • Milk
  • Eggs
  • Cheap cuts of meat
  • Canned tuna
  • Lentils
  • Vegetables
  • Ramen noodles
  • Canned tomatoes
  • Bread
  • Butter

Stipulate that they have to plan for three meals a day. Each meal doesn’t have to total $0.50, but they’re not allowed to exceed $1.50 per day.

See our previous session plan about meal planning for some further ideas on how to help young people learn how to do this.

Activity 3 – Cooking

Even if your youth group can’t fully participate in the entire campaign, cook and eat a meal together. For this part, allow $0.50 per person for ingredients.

This might cause some conflicts between youth who want to eat different things or who don’t like the meal that’s been chosen. Use this as an opportunity to discuss what it must be like for families who have to live on such a strict budget for their entire lives. Encourage them to try to find a meal that everyone’s able to agree upon.

Activity 4 – Fundraiser

Plan a youth group fundraiser as an activity to raise money for people who have to live on such a low budget every day of the year. The Live Below The Line website has a list of partner organizations who the money can be donated to.

A good option could be a spaghetti dinner fundraiser, restricting the portion size spending to $1.50 per person. You can then highlight to the attendees that the meal they just ate would be all that 1.4 billion people worldwide would be able to afford for that day’s food.

Try to charge as much as possible for the meal so that you can maximize the amount raised. If 50 people paid $10 per head, this would raise $425 after the food costs have been taken out. Arrange a collection for the attendees to donate further to the cause.

Activity 5 – Youth Retreat

If you’re planning a youth retreat, consider using a hunger theme, limiting the food spending to $1.50 per person per day. This will give the youth a much better idea of what it’s really like to live on such a low food budget and how bland and lacking in nutrition meals will tend to be.

This will also help reduce the cost of the youth retreat as you’ll need less money for the food budget. Charge the same amount for the retreat as you normally would though, using the additional money to either subsidize the cost for less well-off youth, or donate the rest to a charity that works with people living in extreme poverty.

Questions: Are you taking part in the Live Below The Line campaign? What kind of youth group activities are you planning? Let us know in the comments below.

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Travel Scavenger Hunt

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Travel scavenger hunt
That’s Chilly, that’s Hungry, that’s Rusher and that’s Core Ear

Our scavenger hunt ideas are always popular posts, so here’s another one – a travel scavenger hunt.

This can be used as a standalone youth work session when you just want something fun to do, or it could be used in tandem with a world awareness session.

Here’s how to run a travel scavenger hunt:

Resources

  • Cameras (although cellphone cameras are fine)
  • Travel scavenger hunt list
  • Pens
  • Projector, screen & laptop to display all the scavenger hunt photos at the end
  • Prize(s) for the winning team

Instructions

Take your young people to a local shopping mall or high street. Split them into teams and send a leader with them. Although your group may be old enough to do this scavenger hunt without leaders, it’s a perfect opportunity to build relationships.

Provide each group with a copy of the travel scavenger hunt list (see below) and a pen – this is so that they can check off each item on the list as they go along. The purpose of this scavenger hunt is for them to take photos of all the items on the list but in a creative way (this will be explained in more detail below). Advise them that they can’t just take a photo of a country on a map or travel book, as this would be way too easy!

Your young people are going to be representing your youth group while they’re out and about, so remind them of your behavior policy, group agreement, etc. Also let them know of any particular boundaries for the scavenger hunt (e.g. must stay within the mall/must stay on the high street, etc).

Finally, arrange a time and location for them to all meet at the end. To make sure they arrive on time – or so that they don’t cheat by trying to spend more time than other groups taking photos – consider warning them that their team will be deducted 1 point for every minute that they’re late.

Travel Scavenger Hunt List

The list should consist of countries that they can take photos of in a creative way – this will often be based on how the country is pronounced phonetically, but not necessarily. Give the groups a few examples of what you mean by this, such as:

  • Oman – Take a photo of a group of women (i.e. zero man)
  • India – Take a photo of something inside Bambi (i.e. in deer)
  • Andorra – Take a photo of an Anne Of Green Gables book next to a Dora The Explorer book (i.e. Anne Dora)

Now that you have an idea of what we mean, here’s a list of 21 countries that work well as part of a travel scavenger hunt list:

  • Bahrain
  • Belize
  • Bhutan
  • Chile
  • China
  • Finland
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • Hungary
  • Jordan
  • Kuwait
  • Mali
  • Moldova
  • Panama
  • Philippines
  • Russia
  • Singapore
  • Slovakia
  • South Korea
  • Togo
  • Turkey

Winners

As with most games, the team with the highest number of points at the end wins. However, there are two elements to the scoring with this scavenger hunt:

  • Teams should be awarded one point for each country they successfully take a photo of
  • Bonus points should be awarded based upon creativity, ingenuity, getting members of the public involved, etc

If you liked this idea, check out our other youth scavenger hunts and youth work session plan ideas. You may also like our sister site that has other travel scavenger hunt ideas.

We’ve also published a book with dozens of this type of activity – 52 Scavenger Hunt Ideas. Pick up your copy from Amazon.

Questions: What other countries would you add to the travel scavenger hunt list? And how would you suggest the photos could be taken? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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World Awareness Games Part 2 – Youth Work Session Plan Idea

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World Awareness GamesAt Youth Workin’ It, we value diversity and think it’s important for young people to learn about the world around them. We’ve shared three world awareness games before and today we have another one.

This world awareness game might be useful before discussing children’s rights around the world or participating in an event like Slum Survivor, since the purpose is to get youth thinking about the richest and poorest countries in the world.

Richest and Poorest Countries Activity

Resources

Instructions

  • Place a world map on the wall
  • Split the youth into two teams
  • Explain what GDP is. (Very basically, it’s the amount earned by everyone in the country divided by the number of people in that country each year)
  • Give each team a set of rich and poor piggy bank markers
  • Ask the youth to guess which countries they think are the richest in the world and which are poorest by placing their piggy bank markers on each country
  • Go through the markers and discuss which countries are the richest and poorest, as well as where the ones chosen by your youth fall on the list

Keep this world awareness game light and fun, otherwise it has the potential to be a less fun activity. Consider having some interesting facts available about the five richest and poorest countries, or provide access for the youth to find fun facts about the countries they do choose.

Question: How would you introduce the topic of wealth and poverty among countries to your youth? Share your ideas in the comments below.

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World Awareness Games – Youth Work Session Plan Idea

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World AwarenessIf you’re planning on using last week’s session plan idea on World Awareness, there’s a lot of learning and research that your young people will be doing.

To make things more fun, here are three games that fit in with a World Awareness theme, while also encouraging learning at the same time:

Where Is It?

Split your youth group into teams (or just as individuals/pairs if it’s a small group) and give each team a world map. Call out a country they’re unlikely to know the location of – they have to race to be the first team to find it on the map.

Do a number of these, with the winners being the team who found the most countries at the end of the allotted time/list.

For your own personal fun, make up the name of a country to call out at the end and see how long it takes them searching before they realize it’s not a genuine country 😉

Flag Match

Print off sheets with images of different countries’ flags on it, along with a randomized list of countries the flags belong to. The youth have to match up the flags with the countries.

Have a variety of different flags – some well-known, some that may look familiar and others they’re unlikely to have seen before.

Give Me An A

In this game, youth have to be able to name countries that end in A. There are 75 countries they could name, but needless to say it’s a lot harder to do than you might think.

There are two ways you could play this:

1) Taking Turns – Split the youth group into two or more teams – they then have to take it in turns to name a new country that ends in A.

If there are only two teams, the winner is the team that doesn’t get stuck or repeat a country that’s already been named. You could keep playing if it doesn’t last long, but set the rule that they can’t use countries that have already been named the second time round.

If there are three or more teams, have the teams take it in turns going round in a circle to name a country. If a team gets stuck or repeats a country that’s already been mentioned, they’re out. Keep going until you have a winner. Similar to the two team version, consider playing another round if it doesn’t last long.

Put a strict time limit for how long each group gets to think of a new country to raise the tension of the game – about 10-15 seconds should be good.

2) Making Lists – Give each team a sheet of paper and a pen and give them a set amount of time to list all the countries they can think of that end in A. The winner is the team with the longest list of correct countries (that aren’t repeated!)

To make this game easier for you, there’s a link below to a downloadable attachment with a list of all 75 countries in the world ending in A. Please feel free to download and print off.

List Of Countries Ending in A

 

Question: What other games would work well with a World Awareness theme? Let us know in the comments below.

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