Posts tagged encouragement
Inspiring hope
Jan 1st
I never finished school and I never went to University – and I don’t think that was a bad move. Sure it would have made things easier at times. I have missed getting a few jobs because of my lack of degree. But generally it has not been a problem.
I realise that this is not the norm though. I grew up in a very privileged environment. I had the most loving, supporting and encouraging parents anyone could ever ask for. I shared in my fathers ambitions and learnt to dream far beyond what I imagined was possible. I have always had a lot of hope for the future and to me my dreams seem completely realistic. I am not always sure how I am going to accomplish them, but accomplishing my dreams has always been more a matter of when rather than if. Along the way my confidence has taken a couple of hits, but again I have experienced amazing support that has managed to get me back on track. So I am still working out my dreams and their accomplishment, but I am still certain that I will get there.
I have come to realise that other people are not as fortunate as I have been and I want to do something about it. There are really two elements of what my business is about:
- inspiring people to have hope and dreams for the future,
- and equiping them with skills that will allow them to make a start in accomplishing those dreams
I have had some inolvement with a project called I have a dream (IHAD) they work with schools in low income communities and encourage, mentor and pay for “dreamers” to attend University. IHAD is an excellent program that has had a huge impact in peoples lives. It is a fantastic way to get involved in peoples lives and get them on the right track from the start and I hope that it grows and gets into more schools. In fact when I am in a position to sponsor a school it is something I will get involved with.
Something more than just that is needed though. What I am starting will be working at the other end of the spectrum – helping those who didn’t get that support while they were growing up.
The power of community
Dec 24th
The last six months I have had a real change of mindset with regard to communities. I suppose I had been going through the “Every man is an island” stage. For the last six months I have been doing a Discipleship Training School with Youth with a Mission. There were eighteen people on the course (including staff) and we spent nearly all day together every day. One thing I have learnt was that while you can live as an individual, it is much better to live in community. Having your life closely entwined with others enables them to be there for you. It gives you opportunities to encourage each other and just makes life easier!
We were taking things to extreme by most peoples standards. We would often have times when we would write encouragements to every other person. Pulling out the good things that we see in them and building them up. Personally I was so blessed by this. My self esteem was built up – but not falsely, and I become much more confident to do the tasks that we had to do. I wish this wasn’t extreme. I wish that we did this kind of thing all the time.
So where am I going with this? Well one of the reasons I wanted to start this business is that I want to live in community. So I decided the best way would be to move to get myself in a place where I can do that. The business will be planted in a community and its goals will be around working for that community by bringing in work, developing local community based projects, social networks, encouraging and equiping people for life etc. I am not sure how all this will come together at this stage but I want to try and use it as a vehicle for implementing some of the things I have learnt about living in community.
