Why I am doing this NLP Training for Volunteers project

My purpose in life is to “Change the world from the inside out” and what better way than to support our disadvantaged and at-risk youth. I have the honor of supporting two outreach programs locally that work with kids: Shily’s Promise Youth Ranch (SPYR) and I Believe I Can (IBIC). Both of these programs enable youth and their families to connect with their own strengths.

One of the struggles of these sorts of outreach programs is recruiting skilled volunteers. I have a cunning plan to help with both quantity and quality of volunteers — and therefore the quality of interaction with the kids — for these outreach programsand beyond.

What NLP Training for Volunteers is all about

As anyone who has run a volunteer based organization knows, great volunteers are hard to come by. Those who have the necessary skills may not have the urgings to volunteer and those who show up typically require extensive training before “letting them loose in the wild” of the outreach program. This 12 module/48 lesson NLP course is intended to equip the willing with improved interaction skills.

I, Wayne Buckhanan, am a Trainer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) which is a fancy way of saying that I teach people how to better communicate with themselves and with other people. I have been developing a home study version of our live 7-10 day training in NLP. It has been a slow process and I realized that while I can do everything on the project it doesn’t mean I should do everything. The time I have available means that I can either produce the content for the course or edit it and package it for distribution — but not both. I was fine with the slow progress until I realized how this same material could be used by SPYR and other outreach programs for kids.

Recognizing that the key to youth outreach is good communication and that I have been developing an extensive program in communicating gave the home study course a new sense of urgency.

The NLP training covers many topics ranging from voice qualities to use of various language patterns (in resourceful ways) to advanced story telling. These skills enable the volunteers to give the kids a higher quality of service as well as directly modeling the positive use of language for kids who may never have heard positive language patterns.

So, the kids “win” with better interactions. The second win in this win-win-win situation is that the volunteers gain useful communication knowledge that they can apply across the rest of their lives. The third win is that the organizations will receive a free copy and royalty free use of the NLP course materials in order to train and retain volunteers. Because the amount of course material is comparable with a semester long college course the organization can entice volunteers to continue serving in order to maintain access to the NLP course materials. Oh, and I win from the warm fuzzy of fulfilling my purpose and having completed development of the NLP home study course.

In addition to the 40-60 hours of audios and 12 workbooks with skill building exercises as part of the NLP home study, four short courses will be spun out to address the major sticking points in many people’s lives: motivation, confidence, procrastination, and fear. These short courses will consist of a stand alone book as well as audio/video versions for those who prefer to listen/watch.

[More details on all 5 courses to follow in updates.]

How you can help

The course materials have been laid out, the plan is in place, and a quarter of the NLP audio has been recorded. The initial transcription has begun but will need cleaning up and editing.

Your funding will go towards recording the remaining 35+ hours of material, editing the audios, re/transcription and editing of the text, graphics+layout of worksheets/books, pretty packaging of everything (because as much as we’d like to think otherwise a book/CD/DVD is judged by its cover!), and distribution costs.

Once the initial audio edits go out (to the crew at IBIC for a bonus of directly supporting them with funding and meaningful work) we’ll have a better idea of whether a better microphone needs to be purchased and if re-recording of the first 10+ hours of materials is necessary (!).