St Peter's Anglican Church East Lindfield

Retrenchment Support Workshop programme review

0 comments | Posted by Bruce Goldingay on 12 Dec 2009 in Retrenchment Support ::

Dear Friends,

As the year winds down we thought it would be appropriate to review the retrenchment support programme and to discuss our plans for next year.

Thank you to the following people who were able to attend the review session last Sunday: Bruce Y, Donald, Iain, Ira, Mark B, Neil, Nick, Rose and Steve. Your feedback was appreciated.

Our discussion focused on the following questions:

Should the programme continue next year? same format? changes?
Will you be supporting the programme?
Do we need to change the scope to be more evangelistic?
Should we run another session which is more evangelistic and participants could be invited?
Should we undertake a new advertising campaign?

The general view was that the workshop programme has been about right. It has met an important need and we have seen some wonderful stories of success and encouragement and we have seen our Lord working in people’s lives and in answering our prayers.

We agreed to continue with the programme for a further six months and then review our progress again. We feel that a year would be a significant commitment and by mid-year we will know whether the labour market has really improved. The following recommendations will be addressed in coming months:

as many of the participants are from non-English speaking backgrounds, and this presents some challenges for them in their job search, we will investigate linking them into some Church organised ESL programmes

we will extend the workshop scope on occasion to incorporate other topics and will invite other speakers (e.g., Rose’s colleagues who provided a wonderful session this year on social networking tools)

workshops should include more regular feedback from participants to the group, not just success stories, but also from participants on how they are finding their job search

we will consider a parallel prayer session for participants or other forum in which we can be more evangelistic

we will undertake some further advertising of the programme in 2010 (details to be decided, but not a letterbox drop)

during 2010 as our involvement in this programme winds down we will refocus our time and support to other ministry programmes to be offered by St Peter’s

Appended is some data on the programme thus far:

Initial Evening presentation held in May

13 participants
11 leaders

Workshop programme:

14 workshops from May to Dec
- 5 initial evening participants did not come to any workshops
- jobs secured: 11 (40%) – with two offers pending
- all workshops:
participants – 27 (Catenians invited 3)
leaders – 31 (Catenians 5 (2 regular))