In May this year, I led a team of 8 to Kenya to spend a week working at Spurgeons Academy in Kibera slum. It was a small team of professionals who were donating their time and professional knowledge to build up the capacity of the school and others in the community in various ways, plus a few extras of us who were there to give some input to the children of the school.
Meena, a social worker, spent the week with Rose, the Spurgeons Social Worker, going through various aspects of Rose's work and discussing ways of streamlining processes, or building in capacity, or even just comparing with UK practices and as a result leaving Rose feeling less isolated.
Another team member, Gillian, a schools development officer for a London-based LEA, spent half the week with Oscar Kwama, the Spurgeons head teacher. They looked at school development, data analysis, tracking performance and other aspects that Oscar owned as areas where he knew he needed to get better, but didn't have the resources available to him within the Kenyan education system.
The other half of the week Gillian did literacy and numeracy teacher training with all the teaching staff, discussing various aspects that they had identified as key problem areas
Ally is a teacher at a local comprehensive school where she heads up the mentoring programmes, and she ran some mentoring and self-esteem training for the school staff - another area that had been identified by them as an area where they needed input.
Carey, a nurse, did first aid training, plus she taught the children in the older classes about basic health and hygiene. When you consider that a lot of these students will be heads of household, or at least keeping home ticking over whilst parents or other relatives are out searching for work, then the importance of them knowing about the importance of washing hands, disease transmission, safe food preparation etc is clear.
Mary is a dressmaker, and she spent the week with some ladies of the community who do tailoring as an income generator - together they made shirts and in so doing practiced many new skills to help enhance their products.
Chris, myself, Jake (age 12) and Naomi (age 10) went into all the classes two times each and led RE lessons. This is a subject that doesn't normally get taught on CRED trips, and so it was lovely to be able to have discussion with the children about faith issues, and to hear from them what their faith means to them.
The trip was very successful, and all the staff of the school felt that the week had resulted in them being equipped in various ways to better carry out their day-to-day tasks.
Yesterday, we had the team reunion, and it was great to get back together again 3 months after the trip and reflect both on the trip, and also on what has happened since, what our responses have been to the trip, what opportunities there have been for sharing stories and raising awareness etc.
It was interesting, but not surprising, to hear the range of different responses we have had, and one comment from Ally struck me in particular.
She spoke about how she was wondering what the reason had been that she was on the trip, and how she didn't want it to be a 'one-off' experience, but at the same time how does she incorporate that into life on a daily basis. What was the real lasting benefit to Spurgeons from her going, or was the benefit mainly hers?
An interesting set of questions, and ones that many ask on return. Sometimes we don't know all the answers, and certainly not straight-away, for it can take months and maybe years for all the impacts of the trip to be seen, and then there are all the ripple effects on other people that we don't know about, and might never know about. But for Ally there was an extra dimension I wanted to bring to her: that of being the catalyst.
It was a conversation between Ally and myself several months back, about her desire to take Jake, her middle son, out to Africa that had been the spark for the trip happening, and from there the team was gathered. Thus Ally was the catalyst for all the Spurgeons staff getting the training that they did from the various team members.
In the build-up to the trip, the school that Ally teaches at, that Jake attends, and that I was a parent of (until a few weeks ago!), approached me about setting up a link with Spurgeons Academy, and off the back of that has started fund-raising for the school, and is starting to plan for some student teams to go out there - again all part of Ally's catalyst role.
And then there is all the fundraising that has happened since the trip, through people hearing about the trip and being prompted to make donations - £2500 has been sent out for the feeding programme at the school.
They are some of the outcomes from that initial conversation between Ally and myself, and outcomes of which Ally was the catalyst. There are plenty more that could come - taking young people out there and seeing how it impacts them and their life choices, more fundraising, more teaching staff going out to share best practice.......
As I reflected yesterday - the moral of this is that you just never know how God is going to use a conversation, and you should certainly never underestimate the role of the catalyst!
Stay open to God at work in your life - it's exciting, and can bring about some unexpected opportunities!
Meena, a social worker, spent the week with Rose, the Spurgeons Social Worker, going through various aspects of Rose's work and discussing ways of streamlining processes, or building in capacity, or even just comparing with UK practices and as a result leaving Rose feeling less isolated.
Another team member, Gillian, a schools development officer for a London-based LEA, spent half the week with Oscar Kwama, the Spurgeons head teacher. They looked at school development, data analysis, tracking performance and other aspects that Oscar owned as areas where he knew he needed to get better, but didn't have the resources available to him within the Kenyan education system.
The other half of the week Gillian did literacy and numeracy teacher training with all the teaching staff, discussing various aspects that they had identified as key problem areas
Ally is a teacher at a local comprehensive school where she heads up the mentoring programmes, and she ran some mentoring and self-esteem training for the school staff - another area that had been identified by them as an area where they needed input.
Carey, a nurse, did first aid training, plus she taught the children in the older classes about basic health and hygiene. When you consider that a lot of these students will be heads of household, or at least keeping home ticking over whilst parents or other relatives are out searching for work, then the importance of them knowing about the importance of washing hands, disease transmission, safe food preparation etc is clear.
Mary is a dressmaker, and she spent the week with some ladies of the community who do tailoring as an income generator - together they made shirts and in so doing practiced many new skills to help enhance their products.
Chris, myself, Jake (age 12) and Naomi (age 10) went into all the classes two times each and led RE lessons. This is a subject that doesn't normally get taught on CRED trips, and so it was lovely to be able to have discussion with the children about faith issues, and to hear from them what their faith means to them.
The trip was very successful, and all the staff of the school felt that the week had resulted in them being equipped in various ways to better carry out their day-to-day tasks.
Yesterday, we had the team reunion, and it was great to get back together again 3 months after the trip and reflect both on the trip, and also on what has happened since, what our responses have been to the trip, what opportunities there have been for sharing stories and raising awareness etc.
It was interesting, but not surprising, to hear the range of different responses we have had, and one comment from Ally struck me in particular.
She spoke about how she was wondering what the reason had been that she was on the trip, and how she didn't want it to be a 'one-off' experience, but at the same time how does she incorporate that into life on a daily basis. What was the real lasting benefit to Spurgeons from her going, or was the benefit mainly hers?
An interesting set of questions, and ones that many ask on return. Sometimes we don't know all the answers, and certainly not straight-away, for it can take months and maybe years for all the impacts of the trip to be seen, and then there are all the ripple effects on other people that we don't know about, and might never know about. But for Ally there was an extra dimension I wanted to bring to her: that of being the catalyst.
It was a conversation between Ally and myself several months back, about her desire to take Jake, her middle son, out to Africa that had been the spark for the trip happening, and from there the team was gathered. Thus Ally was the catalyst for all the Spurgeons staff getting the training that they did from the various team members.
In the build-up to the trip, the school that Ally teaches at, that Jake attends, and that I was a parent of (until a few weeks ago!), approached me about setting up a link with Spurgeons Academy, and off the back of that has started fund-raising for the school, and is starting to plan for some student teams to go out there - again all part of Ally's catalyst role.
And then there is all the fundraising that has happened since the trip, through people hearing about the trip and being prompted to make donations - £2500 has been sent out for the feeding programme at the school.
They are some of the outcomes from that initial conversation between Ally and myself, and outcomes of which Ally was the catalyst. There are plenty more that could come - taking young people out there and seeing how it impacts them and their life choices, more fundraising, more teaching staff going out to share best practice.......
As I reflected yesterday - the moral of this is that you just never know how God is going to use a conversation, and you should certainly never underestimate the role of the catalyst!
Stay open to God at work in your life - it's exciting, and can bring about some unexpected opportunities!
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| 'The team' atop KICC tower overlooking Nairobi |
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