Primary Schools Workers GatheringWe have a guest article written by Mary Deller who helps us with our workshops with year 6...

Primary Schools Workers Gathering

We have a guest article written by Mary Deller who helps us with our workshops with year 6 students…

A ‘first’gathering of primary schools’ workers in the county took place on Wednesday 14th January, at Harpenden. The sharing and networking event was organised by Paul from PHASE and Natalie from JUMP, a Harpenden-based schools’ ministry. Judith and myself joined Paul to represent PHASE in Hitchin.

The day (10am-2pm) was primarily an opportunity for people to meet one another and find out more about what is going on around the county, and there is clearly a lot going on. Represented at the meeting, apart from PHASE and JUMP, were Bridgebuilders from Stevenage, Watford Schools Trust, Assembly Angels from St Albans, 267 – a para-church ministry based in Harpenden, which exists to equip children’s and youth ministries across the county. The children’s ministry resource officer from the Diocese of St Albans also joined us, as did a youth and children’s worker from Letchworth.

The main part of our time was spent listening and hearing from the various organisations. It was eye-opening for me to learn about all the excellent work going on around the county, some of which is very similar to PHASE’s work in primary schools, and other work very different. We gleaned some excellent ideas which could be developed by PHASE in primary schools in Hitchin.

It was also very encouraging to know that there is a lot of support out there, resources and funding too, if you know where to go! We realised that we could learn much from each other, by visiting each other’s projects, or more simply, just by keeping in touch. We share many of the same challenges. We appreciated the opportunity to get to know other colleagues, and also to pray for one another at the end of our meeting.

One of our objectives on the day was to establish whether we would like to meet again on a regular basis, and to think about what shape our meetings should take. There was definitely enthusiasm for meeting again and building up links, and also inviting other projects along that were not able to attend our initial meeting.

This kind of network will be very encouraging to us in Hitchin and it would be great to see more of our volunteers there so that we can be inspired and inspire others in turn.