jess•make•room

“We thought of our mother today, you’ve given us our wings.” ~ CSE Facilitator

Our current grant cycle has been the most interesting and the most rewarding. Our funding was delayed, activities were canceled, and deadlines were pushed up. Even now, we are sprinting to the fishline. However, within this haste, we reached a milestone that I advocated for from our first planning meeting – sharing ownership of project responsibilities that will strengthen sustainability.

At our most recent planning meeting, I introduced a strategy that would help our district complete more deliverables simultaneously and create structures for sustainability. I split the team into pairs to deploy them on the same day at different schools, removed myself from the weekly in-school training, and gave the facilitators the tools and resources to manage their training. The transition was not smooth, but we discovered areas that need improvement and it demonstrated the trust I have in the facilitators to manage the financial aspect of training and gave me the freedom to invest more time with the Guidance and Counselling Teachers to support their clubs and to engage with students.

On the evening of their first training, I called one facilitator and asked, “How did it go?” She said, “We thought of our mother today, you’ve given us our wings.”