Program Proper

PROGRAM PROPER

DAY 1: ACADEMICS

The following activities will take place at three different locations inside the chosen place for the retreat, the garden, open court and the billiard hall.

ACTIVITY 1: Yoga Exercise

It starts with a yoga exercise at the garden to make our adolescent fathers feel at peace and ease while enjoying the scenery surrounding them. This will provide them a time to relax after long stressful days, weeks, months, they went through. Yoga too can strengthen their body functions and can further develop their health. As they say, life is a unique and complex journey, parallel to the diverse and inevitable changes our bodies and in turn health undergo. This activity aims to associate health and stress. Yoga can also provide the same benefits as any well-designed exercise program, increasing general health and stamina, reducing stress, and improving those conditions brought about by extreme vigorous lifestyles which is exactly what our adolescent fathers need. Through this activity, it will help them reduce their stress, provide them quality and essential relaxation, and cleanse their minds.

ACTIVITY 2: Getting into Sports: Basketball and Billiards

People, especially male adolescents love getting into sports and making those muscles work. A sport is not only a form of exercise but also, enhances our thinking strategic skills. If we are sports minded, we become more smart and intelligent. Sports, in a deeper sense, makes people move towards achieving their goals and bring out the best of them, this learning may not be always realized and learned in a four-cornered classroom. Through sports, our adolescent fathers will become more active, dynamic and deliberate on each of their actions they take and be reminded that each action can cause something, either bad or something good. Also through sports, they become good leaders and become wise in every decision they make.

Through these set of activities, we aim to be able to make these adolescent fathers realize the opportunity to mingle and get to know other adolescent fathers and at the same time, learn from each one of them.

DAY 2: ECONOMICS

These activities’ purpose is to make our adolescent fathers be able to think economically and actually gain something from this kind of thinking. We want to remind each one of them that economics is not always about making money, but rather, making the right choices out of the difficult options in life, taking risks, and become reasonable in terms of money matters.

Activity 1: Film Viewing: “The Pursuit of Happyness”

For the second day of our program, we will be having a film viewing of a movie entitled "The Pursuit of Happyness". The film is about a father whose name is Chris Gardner, a San Francisco salesman struggling to build a future for himself and his 5-year-old son Christopher. When his girlfriend Linda walks out, Chris is left to raise Christopher on his own. Chris’ determination finally pays off when he lands an unpaid internship in a brutally competitive stockbroker-training program, where only one in twenty interns will make the cut. But without salary, Chris and his son are evicted from their apartment and are forced to sleep on the streets, in homeless shelters and even behind the locked doors of a metro station bathroom. With self-confidence and the love and trust of his son, Chris Gardner rises above his obstacles to become a Wall Street Legend.

This film would certainly inspire our adolescent fathers because they can somehow relate to the movie’s storyline. We would want them to realize the importance of being a good father to their children, that fortune and fame doesn’t really matter at all, but the love of a father to his family, the willingness to do whatever it takes, and to be a good provider to your children’s needs is what, what counts the most.

Activity 2: Sharing of insights and thoughts about the film

After the film viewing, they will have their chance to reflect and share thoughts with one another on what they realized or felt during and after watching the film. This will be a time of sharing views that will surely help each one of them to improve oneself as a person and especially as a father.

DAY 3: PERSONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

For the last day of our program, we included very meaningful games for all the adolescent fathers joining the retreat. These games may seem too simple and plain but truth is, in a more profound point of view, these games can actually make you come up with very significant realizations about oneself and life.

Activity 1: The Candle War

This activity’s mechanics would start with grouping all the fathers in a group of four. Each group will be given a candle. Each of these groups will light the candle and place them fixed on the floor wherein that place would be the group’s chosen safe area. The objectives of each group are to hit off the light of the other group’s candle and save the light of your own group’s candle. From here, each group will have to set creative strategic plans on how to be successful on their objectives.

This game may sound really simple, but it requires all hard work and full effort. This is not just a mere game, but rather a test as to how long one is willing to save and fight for something that’s important, whatever and long it will take. That light they are eager to save may serve as an inspiration to pursue their dreams and aspirations for oneself and the family they have already created.

Activity 2: Sinking Game

This game tests their sensitivity, alertness and their cooperation with the other team members. Realization also can be a part of this for if you'll think deeply; this game is not just a game of having fun. This shows how things value to a person, how one takes care of these, and how much can one give or do just to assure the security of a thing or a person. This sinking game tests how a person weighs things. In this game, all the adolescent fathers will be gathered near the sea shore and each of them will be given a boat with stones and colored balls on. The stones and balls on it are just right for the boat to remain floating. A colored ball represents something. For example, green for money, white for family, and the like. Every minute, a colored ball should be replaced by a stone until five colored balls with stones remain on the boat. This is indeed would be difficult for them to identify and weigh things. It is like both are important to you but you have to choose only one for you cannot have both things at the same time.

Realization would be made after the game. The game aims to twig on their minds the complexity of life, that life is not perfect at all. Sure, they have endured obstacles along their way on being a father. Their life before, without an own child having to worry, is of course far easier than actually having one now. But now that they’re already facing a new and a more difficult chapter of their lives, they would have to work harder. What matters and what’s important now is family, and not about satisfying oneself.

Activity 3: Burning of Uncertainties

Then, the last activity happens at night. In the middle of the garden, all the candles will be gathered and lighted. After that, all the adolescent fathers will sit around the candles and each of them gets a chance to share their feelings, learnings and define who they really are. However, their fears, doubts, regrets and frustrations will be written on a piece of paper. Next, that paper will be burned for this night will be the end of those bad memories they’ve been carrying all along; for from this moment will be a new start of a better person not just for himself and for others but more importantly for their families.