Letting go another time; the Jobseekers Network Cafe

It's difficult for people to let go of what's precious, what makes gives them purpose and meaning, especially when they don't really know what it is their hanging on for, or aren't self-aware enough to realise that's what they're doing.

For me, as a Community Development Worker, I get used to these goodbyes and it doesn't make me sad anymore. I get emotionally involved with them, but I don't get emotionally attached with the people I work with. At SCOREscotland, I cried when I left, and maybe that was under exceptional circumstances, but I had driven that project and made it what it is today, and I make no apologies for owning that achievement boldly because it's the truth.

The more times I say goodbye, the better I get at it. Having a grasp of the bigger picture helps too. And having a bright meaningful futures gives me hope in and makes the difference between me lingering on the past or getting on with living life now. We all have our own lives to live and it takes all sorts to make a world doesn't it?

So this morning I had my final session with the group and I'm glad to say it made the first 3 weeks worth it. We had a major breakthrough today and it was with the concept of the World cafe that it happened.

• Everyone should be sitting down at a table already, and each table has a different question which is in the middle of your table. We will have 3 rounds so everyone will have sat at each table and discussed all 3. At the end of each round we’ll regroup and feedback.

The 3 questions were:

o What do you think is the purpose of the Job Seekers Network?



o Why do you come to the Job Seekers Network and how has it changed your life?


o How would you like to see the Job Seekers Network develop and how can you contribute to making it happen?

From this, the group identified funding as the priority goal to be addressed. There were emerging leaders in the group that came out their shells today and one of them suggested that the group have a meeting just to make a strategic plan to secure funding in 2 weeks time because the group are having their regular guest speaker session next week which can't be changed.
 
There were moments that made me want to cry, but that was only one. I had many moments when I felt happy and smiley. I walked into the room and there were red and white chequered table cloths, with pink and white carnations in vases. Cheese muffins, buns, carrot cake, pastries, all homemade and lots of people bustling around. It was a delight to see and the group all made it happen because the week before I had gone through atasks and asigned volunteers. All I brought was the laptop to play the CDs someone else bought. I got two leaving cards and one woman gave me cute wee kiwi bird ear-rings. Shame my ears aren't pierced :-S The discussion was flowing so freely that time ran out for evaluation! Booooh! but I recorded it for my assessed observation for my uni tutor to watch when I get back. What really made me happy was the woman who had a go at me two weeks before, was smiling and saying 'Thank You' repeatedly, like she was saying sorry too for the previous week. I think maybe repitition is a habit of hers...
 
It's was tough too. The founder right at the last 10 mins was undermining me and saying patronisingly that what I am suggesting is not real life, and that if you want to do it because you need to for university then do it, but I don't think we can say that we can do this in real life...i was just about giving up at this point to her constant barrage of ingratitude when another emerging leader shouted out that could have a subcommittee to talk about the funding. The rest of the group nodded approval and then I began writing this down... A subcom...but then Linda butted in again it's not a subcommittee and I stop writing down someone else's words, and then the other leader says a group then and Linda can't object cause it's not a formal word and so I score out subcommittee  and write group. When will the group do this I ask? But next week there's a guest speaker and I couldn't change it because they insisted on it, arriving to do what the group have always done. So let's make it in 2 weeks... and then I realise 1 and half hours has flown by already and we have to pack up.
 
It's been difficult, but it happened, after 4 weeks of wondering why I do this, my faith wins the day I feel confident they're on their way to becoming the amazing example of community development that they have the potential to be. And if they don't, well, it was always about the process anyway ... I'll show you my portfolio when I get home...
 
:)

On another note, this is some of my flower arranging. Wendy brought in the flowers from her garden and the green goddess lilies are actually a weed here! Not native and so shouldn't be in gardens... still, they are beautiful.

UNPREDICTABLE: if I had to choose one word to describe Community Development Work

So I've changed the group I was meant to be working with and now I'm working with 2 but both of them don't know where they are never mind where they want to be and it's my job to support them to get there but how am I meant to do that...good question...again, that would be my job to support them with that too...

Last Wednesday was the 1st session with the Jobseekers Network, made mostly of people redundant during the recession. It's been tough working with this group as it's more a group of individuals who think independantly  of each other than a group. Tuckman would say they're between forming and storming. While they have various roles and all contribute to the group, through financial donations, bringing cakes, plants, fruit to share or by doing the dishes at the end, and while the group has grown from 1 to 20+ regular attenders since Easter 2009, they lack a structure to make decisions and take actions collectively. The group's growth is down to committed leadership however there is a power imbalance between the founder and her group, to the point where I proposed a very basic provisional programme for 4 weeks and met resistence; the founder felt that what I proposed wasn't relevant because the group already learn and support each other and function well...maybe, she said, it would be better if I do the programme as a one-to-one...yes, I said, the group does help each other get jobs all the time and learns from each other, I completely agree and it should keep doing what works, but this programme uses different methods which will hopefully support the group's development in other ways that will strengthen what you're already doing... I also had to stress that I am not a personal development trainer or life coach.

I totally understand. It's her baby. It's precious to her and she wants to be the martyr, the one driving things forward. And I know that's true but I've been there too, all community developers go through that stage of taking responsibility for a group when the power lies with everyone in that group equally. We fool ourselves into thinking we're all different, with varying possessions of power, but all we have influence and the power is how we use that influence, to the detriment or improved well-being of any group, which is another art altogether.

Anyways, I realised after that conversation, the founder holds all that power and by rejecting an opportunity to work with me, she would be the bar between me and the group. She agreed to let me work with them and afterwards give them the option of whether or not they want to continue so for another 3 weeks. It takes a leap of faith and am immense trust, to let go of a group you have a key role in developing but when you realise the group takes care of itself, you realise you never really had any power afterall and it was the inspiration, vision, or enthusiasm that was needed to light the spark...we all have our roles to play in the universe and we accept it gracefully or reject it with sever consequences to our well-being.

So after some serious persuasion, I managed to get that one day with the Jobseekers network, after serious reservations that my diplomacy might fail on this ocassion and guess what? The session went down a treat! To my surprise they group loved it, one or two said they didn't learn anything but they didn't say it was a load of rubbish.

I started off with a name game ice breaker as not everyone knows each others names and I only met them the previous week. We went round the large circle of 18 of us and I started: My name is Wishful Wing...but we got to the group of 5 men, and three of them passed, throwing the ball to the next person with a look that said 'this is childish' on their faces. At the of the session I asked everyone to do the same but add feedback on the session. Not only did everyone have praise and positive comments, the men who passed the ice breaker were joining in with incredibles and rockets attached to their names! I was so pleased.

What I found interesting is the evaluation questionnaires that only 8 returned. Some of them said the worst bits were thinking of a word to describe themselves (the ice-breaker) and thinking about the past. My goal setting activity asked them to remember times they were happy in their past and some of them found that made them unhappy... the founder seemed to realise the benefits of this method of group development. The session was far from perfect but they didn't notice, I think because this type of work is totally different to anything they've done before. Overall, it was a success and they enjoyed the experience. I'm looking forward to tomorrow now that group have 'bought into' the community development 'thing'. But as always, I hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.

Then on Thursday last week, I did the second session with He Wero's Teen Parents (Mum's) Group. After the Balloon people went down a storm on Monday, I was revved up to go and do a values activity after a quick art & crafty ice-braker but the school holidays began last Friday and all the mum's wre winding down. We only did the ice-breaker, which they loved too, but after predicting that this was the group I'd work most effectively with, and that the Jobseekers' Network would be less successful, in 2 days, my judgement was proved wrong and reality was the total opposite... like I said, totally unpredictable...but I love this work precisely because of it's organic nature: it's unpredictable; you can never predict the future, the weather, reactions and responses, although humans may try until we're blue in the face, nature finds a way and never gives up.

Forget the Mountain Trek, it's swings and roundabouts with the wee ones, teenage mums and the never-been-unemployed-before-middle-class, plus a few randoms

Ok, so no photos but there will be... firstly, another reason why I'm not homesick yet is that everyone uses the word 'wee' here, I hear it more here than in England!

So today I spent time with a teen parent group in Henderson, and, as is normal with caring responsibilities, there remains a gender bias and its all young women who bring their wee one's to this group. It was quite funny the first time I met them on Tuesday. Averil , the manager had spoken to me on the phone and of course I have a Scottish accent, so when I turned up on the day she didn't expect a small Chinese looking girl to turn up at the door and said to everyone that it's a 'Scottish' girl turning up so that couldn't be me. Then when I came in and said I am the Scottish girl, they were all in giggles for the rest of time. I forget that my Scottish-Chineseness entertains people until this happens but then I forget allover again until the next time.

Back to the development work: the group have a large empty green lawn in the back where they want to create a food garden and soft play area but one that can be packed up at the end of each day, and when they move to their brand new building (currently being extended onto Henderson High School) in the next 12 months. The handful of mums I met today where very caring of their own babies but of each other, mums and babies. My analysis is that they have learnt to care at a young age, in a mothering role, for these babies and that makes them more considerate of others. I started working at the YMCA one month before I left for NZ where I work with, not teen, but mums younger than me, and I was trying to put my finger on it and now I have. The age, experience and parenthood, of these young mum's who accept the responsibility of giving heir lives to the children with immemse tenderness, makes them naturally more community aware. They are feminists in their experience, their choices and the consequences to care for another life and sacfrifice parts of themselves for their children.

These mums still live with their parents, I gather, and like many others have visions of perfect love, marriage with the fathers of their babies or boyfriends since, chirstmas holidays with the best gifts for their kids, shiny cars, beautiful homes and flawless bodies... they get picked at 10 and dropped off at their parents at 3pm, Mon to Friday, and have a weekly early childhod development session, go to a Barnardos parenting group and chill-out the rest of the time in between changing nappies, feeding, napping themselves, watching their babies nap and doing their schoolwork. I wonder where the fathers are: at work, at school, out the picture, in prison? As a practitioner, I've learnt not to wonder too much about supplementary information unless volunteered. Even then, it's sometimes biased, tainted or falsified. What I'm interested in is where they're at, and where they've been if it's still somewhere they haven't let go of yet...

Oh, and another thing is, people try to guess my age. The teen mums though I was between 17 and 21...thanks for the genes mum and dad.

Right, so yesterday, I also met the Job Seekers Network. A whole other kettle of fish. I went along to 'participate' (read 'observe') at their 2 hour weekly meeting in Te Atatu (an hour on public transport: I wish I tried harder to get my license before I left) where the first half is a blur of information about networking events, announcements and job vacancies, intros of new group members and updates from present, previous members and supporters before the break and a guest speaker. I found it quite difficult to sit through the talk by an NLP life-coach talking about how belief is what enabled her to turnover $20,000 per week at her bar. Hmmm, I think social, economic and political factors had an influence on the success of her business... anways, there were people who lapped it up. Maybe they are desparate for some answers, some a magic formula to depression caused by a loss of job/ confidence/ house/ everything they thought they knew about society/ themsleves/ money/ happiness/ any/ all/ of the above??? Maybe, may be not? But at the end, all I know is that this lifecoach suggests she comes back to do a 2 day version of her course, just for the group, at a special rate... when I'm sitting there, as Community Development worker offering support to the group and asking for nothing but the best of themselves. I have no interest in making money out of other in this job, enough to eat, sleep in a warm place and see the important people in my life is enough. Furthermore, the reason why the members are there is precisely because the cars, the house, the money, the job can't get them happiness...

I found the group individualistic and lacking a critical socialist education perspective that it so evidently is yearning for. As a commonwealth country, built on western ideology, it doesn't surprise me. It's a stark contrast to the Young Mum's group...this is where the real work starts, 3 weeks in to my placement, a few frayed nerves later, and disappointments embraced, I can get my teeth sunk into these two projects that are ready to progress