AmeriCorps Alum Creates Team Building Website for Current Members

Teampedia (www.teampedia.net) is an online collaborative encyclopedia of team building activities and icebreakers that anyone can edit. "I always wished we had something like this when I was an AmeriCorps Member," says founder and AmeriCorps alum, Seth Marbin. "We used to email each other all the time - 'hey does anyone know of a good icebreaker for a group of 10-15 middle school students?' and 'what was that activity where everyone is on the tarp and you try to flip it over?"

Teampedia was designed to help put all those activities that are passed around via email and word of mouth, into an easily accessible, updatable, and searchable format. It was originally seeded with many of the team building activities Marbin learned at City Year (www.cityyear.org) as an AmeriCorps Promise Fellow, and has grown with the help of many fellow AmeriCorps alumni including: Jeff Murphy, Rick Jakious, Camille Kennedy, Eric Johnson, Matthew Little, Andrew Raven, Jordan Roberts, Nikki Tabron and Alissa Ziemianski.

Although originally conceived as a tool for AmeriCorps members, Teampedia has attracted a wide audience including team leaders, trainers, teachers, managers, camp directors, counselors, and youth groups. The mission of Teampedia is to become the world's largest collection of resources to facilitate teamwork, team building, and community. "We chose to make it a wiki because anyone can add to it and benefit from it, and over time, it will only continue to get better," adds Marbin.