An inspirational team

One of the privileges of leading teams of young people is the opportunity to be alongside them as they experience new cultures and countries, have perspectives challenged, review their priorities and generally return home with new outlooks on life.

And on most trips, there will be one or two team members who particularly inspire me as I hear their stories and where they have come from.

But this time has to top the lot with regard to inspirational team members. We aren’t a big team, but each of the young people, and two of the leaders, has grown up in the care system, and it is a massive eye-opener, and humbling experience, as I listen to them chatting and glean bits of their stories.

Last night for example, three or four of them were chatting, and comparing stories on how many different foster homes they have lived in, how many different schools and authorities they have come under the care of, and as a result how hard it is to gain any sense of real belonging and community. One of them felt they were lucky as they’d only been moved 5 times, another could name more than 10 different foster homes and children’s homes that they had lived in at various points.

I can’t even start to imagine what it must be like to have that sort of disruption as the starting point, or reference point for life, and yet listening to the team it is their area of commonality, and their norm.

Some of them are in contact with biological family members, and in some of these cases, it seems that these members, especially the parents, are quite needy and lean heavily on the emotional side of the young people. As a result there has been a lot more contact with home than there would normally be on a team trip, as the ensuing guilt of not contacting home, and not checking that mum etc is OK can be too much to cope with.

What strikes me is how matter of fact they are about it all. It’s just life for them, and whilst it leaves me reeling, and marveling at how they cope, they just get on with life.

Yes, it takes a while for some of them to trust new people – no surprise there; and yes it is clear that some find uncertainty and vagueness quite unnerving – no surprise there either; and yes they are very good at pushing boundaries to suss out new situations and new people – again no surprise. But, that is fairly standard for a lot of young people their ages, and what I love about this team is how quickly we have all started to feel like a family, and the banter, laughter, supportiveness and empathy that is flowing.

It was lovely today to listen to some of the girls chatting in the car about their plans for adulthood – dreams and hopes, possible plans being hatched. Academically many of them struggled, in part because of the disruption of being moved around, in part because of teenage rebellions going on at formative times in their school careers. So plans for going to college etc tend to be a bit behind their non-foster contemporaries, but that isn’t putting them off. The overall theme coming through today was how each of the girls wants to get a qualification, get a job, settle down with a nice guy, and then think about having children. They want their children to have a good childhood, ‘not the rubbish one I had’ – as one of them said.  Really encouraging to hear, and I pray that the girls can each realise that dream in their own way.

One of the projects we visited was a kindergarten for Roma kids, and chatting to one of the team members afterwards he was saying how it made him sad to think that the children go home to really tough situations, where there isn’t necessarily a parent waiting, or much love going around. And as he was saying this, it was evident that this is something that the team member has personally been through in his childhood, and can really relate to; as a result of drawing on that personal experience he was really inspired to go the extra mile to make the children happy today.

One of the others said this: ‘I wish there was something more I could do, today has had a massive influential effect on my life of how I perceive what I think are major problems in my life because in reality my ‘problems’ come nowhere near to how these young children are living and what they are going through’. Powerful and impacting stuff – and if her problems have become minor compared to the little ones we helped in the kindergarten, then what a wake up call to me and how I view my ‘problems’.

So a massive ‘thank you’ to this team – I am learning so much from each and every one of them. It is such a privilege to be part of their lives in this small way, and to help give them an experience that is clearly impacting them, growing their horizons and giving them new perspectives. May the outcomes of this trip continue to show through in many wonderful ways – and based on what we have seen so far, I think they will.