Journey Facilitator Resources

Journey Retreats

Journey is a set of local chapter retreats engaging and supporting undergraduate brothers in a wide range of areas. The first set of Journey retreats are focused on strategic planning, living our values, managing positive change in chapter culture and strengthening brotherhood. Future Journey retreats have the potential to focus on risk management, recruitment, substance use and abuse, and suicide. The Journey program aligns with Sigma Chi’s mission to prepare values-based leaders committed to the betterment of their character, campus and community. The retreats also embody Sigma Chi’s core values of friendship, justice and learning by weaving accountability and feedback across the curriculum. 

The Strategic Visioning retreat is designed to help chapters plan out the year ahead based on goals set by their officers during the Balfour Leadership Training Workshop. Members generate a shared vision for the long-term future of the chapter, generate a set of their own ideas for achieving this vision, and create a plan of action to put major building blocks in place.
The Chapter rEvolution retreat is designed to help a chapter work through a cultural change, whether that change is self-directed or externally imposed. Using their own and their stakeholders’ observations, members conduct a 360-degree analysis of their chapter’s culture, learn a leadership model that explains the mechanics of culture change, and decide what steps they will take to remain relevant in a changing community, campus and society. 

The Strengthening our Brotherhood retreat is designed to bring individual members into closer and deeper personal relationships while addressing issues that present a challenge to the chapter’s sense of brotherhood. The retreat will help members articulate the meaning of brotherhood and identify specific objectives that they will personally and collectively do to improve. This module is especially helpful for chapters following recruitment, membership selection or Initiation, when interpersonal conflicts arise, or as an annual activity to reconnect members after a break.

Note: This retreat is currently in pilot stage. 

Role of the Facilitator

As the facilitator, your role is to guide participants through an experience that will help them address whatever issues they are facing. The success of each retreat will not come from your delivery of the content, but from the reflection, discussion, activities and commitments that members share with each other. As a facilitator, your responsibility is to create this environment, introduce activities, and ask thought-provoking questions, while letting participants reach their own conclusions. It should go without saying, but as a facilitator, you will not play the role of a presenter, teacher, parent, supervisor or advisor.

Retreat Design

The outline of each retreat follows an intentional process that is designed to help members naturally reach the objectives that they have identified. It follows an institutional format, meaning that each component builds upon the next, and every member experiences the same process. This means that individual sections should not be skipped or switched, and that all members should be present throughout the experience.

Journey retreats involve a variety of experiences, including personal reflection, presentation, group discussion and small group exercises. The format varies throughout the day in order to maintain energy and strengthen learning outcomes. 

Facilitator Documents

 

For facilitator and participant documents for PILOT Retreats (below), please email journey@sigmachi.org. Please include the retreat documents that you need, your name, the institution where you are facilitating and the date on which you are facilitating. Thank you!

  • Strengthening Our Brotherhood Facilitator Guide
  • Strengthening Our Brotherhood Participant Workbook