All General and Organization-Wide Meetings and Trainings

Within your affiliate, please ensure that the Code of Ethics and Good Conduct is integrated in all general meetings and training sessions. A sample document is downloadable below (document #1).

Annual training on the Code of Ethics and Good Conduct

We recommend that ethics training is given at least once a year to volunteers and staff.

This can be done around the time of the annual evaluation of staff, volunteers and board.

The training can be given by the affiliate ethics officer, or any leader of a team (staff or volunteer) who is authorized to carry out training for the affiliate.

Here is a suggestion for the program for the training on ethics:

1. Send out the code in its most recent version ourcode.worldwishnetwork.com,

and ask the persons to read it beforehand.

2. Walk through the code. Presenters: a presenter document is downloadable below for your use (document #2).

Note: Your trainer should not have an attitude that is too strict; this is about confirming and affirming what our values are, and should not be done in the style of a legal or ‘police-oriented’ session.

3. Ask: how do you personally live this out? How do you as a leader/volunteer/staff personify this? How would you show positive behavior:

• For the value of respect
• For the value of dialogue
• For the value of good governance
• For the value of accountability
• For the value of excellence

4. Ask if anyone encountered any potentially unethical behavior during the past period of activity. What did you (the person) do about it? Did you find this difficult?

Note: If necessary, point this out to your affiliate ethics officer.

5. Present some dilemmas for discussion for board / staff / volunteers. See downloadable document below (document #3); these dilemmas are different from those for newcomers.

6. Also consider using the document for staff, when you have in-person training sessions - downloadable below (document #4).

7. Ask for any suggestions to improve the Code – relay these to the ethics officer.

How to Give Feedback

At Make-A-Wish, we provide feedback in several situations:

• Peer to peer (volunteer, board, office colleague)
• Manager to staff
• Supervisor to volunteer

Here are some tips on how to give feedback:

What happens when you give someone feedback?

Someone gives a message to someone else and wants the other one to change his/her behavior. It is a form of comment. Positive feedback motivates and supports. Negative feedback is often harder to give and to receive, it feels like a correction and criticism.

It is very important to give each other feedback. Feedback helps to improve communication and cooperation. You can learn from feedback.

Why is it sometimes so difficult to give feedback?

When you give feedback, there is always the risk that your messages are not understood in the right way. The other person feels attacked, gets angry or maybe sad. And that is not what you want to achieve.

When you are afraid this might happen, it seems sometimes easier to avoid giving the feedback. The disadvantage of this is that you suppress the feedback, you might get annoyed and the atmosphere gets negative.

In other words: If you have feedback that is constructive and necessary, give the feedback.

See document #5 below for more on giving constructive feedback.