CELBET Training team with a support of Romanian Customs Authority organized a training that was held on 24-25 of October in Sinaia. The trainees were customs officers from Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.
Trainers of the anti-corruption area, approved by the CELBET Training team, are customs officers from Greece, Finland and Poland. They have prepared not only interesting presentations but also provide trainees with practical elements such as: case studies of anomalies in the organization, the interactive game “Mafia”, analysis of the psychological ad social aspects of corruption. Original and engaging training tools and ideas met with high appreciation from the trainees side.
Integrity and Professional Ethics trainers touched the most crucial areas of the anti-corruption: Dark Triad, core values, pyramid of the organizational culture, corruption typologies, influence of the environment and how to react in a corrupt situation. Dorota, trainer from Poland, described the pyramid of the company’s organizational culture, that influences the level of corruption risk.
Additionally, trainees had an opportunity to discover psychological, mental context of corruption. Trainers prepared special materials highlighting the interpersonal aspects of corrutpion: how the body language may reveal the corruption intentions or activities, why some people are not able to say „no”, what does it mean „proper behaviour” in corrupt act ?
” Corrpution is often a matter of mentality. Our challenge is to transform the culture and mentality of people who join customs administration” – underlined Panagiotis Ballas, trainer from Greece.
During the second day of training, Frontex officers in an online mode joined the training and presented information on anti-corruption procedures and good practices.
In order to make the training more interactive and engaging, Tomasz a trainer from Poland, prepared a game „Mafia”. Each trainee secretly picked a card that referred to either Mafia or Honest person. There was also a policeman and doctor role. The game revolved around night and day scenes. During the first night, Mafia got to know identity of all their teammates. Nobody had no idea who is who in the game. Only Mafia knew who belonged to Mafia.
„The aim of the game was to eliminate Mafia and save Honest persons, but it also showed how does the manipulation look like and what were the difficulties in adopting to the new circumstances” – explained Tomasz, trainer from Poland.
Dorota, trainer from Poland, invited trainees to Power Tower -team building activity, that showed what happened if one of the team member doesn’t want to cooperate and ruin all the teams’ efforts. “We have to build a tower just by using the strings, our communication skills and also team’s power. If one of you will not cooperate all efforts will be lost, like in a battle with a corruption” – explained Dorota before the trainees started the game.
During the feedback session, all trainees agreed that corruption destroys many crucial areas of the society, work place and economic and that first step in an effective fight with corrutpion is the identification of corrupt act.
” During 19 years of working in customs, I have attended two trainings, that in my opinon, were the best ones. First was organized in Charlseton, USA by US Customs and second best training is this, here in Romania, organized by CELBET. It showed not only obvious facts and reasons of the corruption but also psychological and human factors”. – summed up Ants Kutti from Estonia.
