What Have I learnt...

The end is officially here, I have done my three months of training, tonight I will be given my diploma (thats a whole other post!), so the question is what have I actually learnt?!

I thought the most logical way to answer this question is to share what I was taught each week, and then just one point that impacted me most, either about working with children at risk, or my life, or just what I found it interesting, so here goes.....

Week 1: Respecting women, types of intelligence, and characteristics of children
The thing that stood out most was how quickly we can destroy a child's innocence and childhood in so many ways - breaking their trust in us, lying to them, exposing them to things that are not age appropriate for them, laughing at them, not encouraging them etc...but this damage can take years to be restored and to heal the child, and has such an effect on the rest of their life - really made me stop and think.

Week 2: Worldview and community development
Did you know in the Old Testament times it use to be law to help the poor?! That challenged me, we need to be asking ourselves the questions, not IF we can help the poor but HOW we can help. We need to work with the poor communities, but not so they come reliant on us - but so they come to a point where our help is not needed, that is true community development - where people can help themselves, and have learnt a trade, developed skills, learn about how to live with good morals and values, and then put it into practice and work themselves (not us doing it for them) out of poverty.

Week 3: Planning projects, creativity, street children
We looked at the story of Nehemiah this week. He had heard about the bad situation in Jerusalem, and his response was then to go and help restore the walls. We were challenged that is our story...we are in training we are hearing about the sad and horrible reality of children at risk, so we have information....but with that means we have responsibility to go help restore the broken lives of children. The next question is what is my role in helping restore these lives...

Week 4: Discipline
Before this week I had the total wrong meaning of discipline - it is not about punishment....the word discipline comes from the latin word disciple - it is about shaping someones character, encouraging and stimulating good behaviour and correcting bad behaviour. We learnt a lot about going about disciplining a child, especially children who use to be at risk, and being creative in working with them. It was a real interesting week, and really made me think about my past experiences of work.

Week 5: Kings Kids and it's values and principles
Kings Kids is a YWAM programme for children and young people - to go into communities to share God's love through drama, dance, social projects and more. The foundation is about knowing God, and growing in God and then teaching others about God. The biggest thing that impacted me was the hour lesson we had about the things that hinder children E.g. that they are not old enough to understand, its too much bother to work with them, that they cannot offer anything just listen, plus more. Do I do anything in my life/work that hinders a child?!

Week 6: Communication, first aid & abortion [very mixed week of teaching!]
I learn that my communication style is a mixture of: people, process, action and ideas - which is also known as the Jesus style. Knowing how someone communicates and works is so important and really helps a team function well. Learning about abortion was so tough - we watched a film of a abortion and it was horrific - it really hit me that abortion is murder.

Weeks 7 - 12 will be on the next post, give you a break to get a cup of tea and a biscuit to keep reading, and my fingers a rest from typing...!!