Monday 6 August 2012

Have Faith...

Well the GB Team has come good this week with 5 Golds as of this Friday (3rd Aug) morning. The message of having faith in the team, and carrying on, being well made!

I have had a “different” week, not just because of the Olympics, but because on Wednesday I was live on the Shah Jahan radio site discussing “Young people and spirituality “ with lovely people from different faiths – a Muslim, a Sufi (the mystical branch of Islam), a Jew, and me as a Christian. The debate was hosted by the Diocesan Interfaith Adviser, who also happens to be the wife of the Imam. We all enjoyed the discussion and were struck by the similarities between faiths, whilst acknowledging the very real differences.

 My own view is that children and young people do have an innate spiritual capacity which is then squashed by commercialism, the worst aspects of the internet and social media, and peer pressures. That a spiritual capacity survives is reflected in the wonderful altruism, social awareness, and self-giving that so many young people have in their late teens and early twenties reflected in charitable work in the UK and overseas, volunteering, fund-raising etc By the way there are excellent publications by the National Youth Agency about young people and spirituality that are not didactic or religious.

On Tuesday my Chairman and I met with our counterparts in West Sussex in pursuance of a strategic intention to build Surrey/Sussex links about collaboration and mutual support. It was an excellent meeting, and we quickly identified areas for collaboration. Hanna (West Sussex CVYS) will be coming to our next Trustees meeting, and vice versa so that the links are built between us.

Talking of Trustees we had an excellent meeting on Tuesday evening at which two new Trustees were introduced. We have a very capable Board. The key items were signing off the Report and Accounts for 2011/12 and approving our 3 year strategy. Encouragingly Trustees have volunteered to work with us staff to take particular objectives forward.

For the rest I am concentrating on two grant bids: one to the Lottery for ourselves, and the second bid is for our uniformed organisations to the Armed Forces Community Covenant Grant Fund. Both bids are of the highest importance. These need to be ready by the end of August, whereupon I need to have confidence (faith) in the value of what we’re doing, as indeed I do!

Mike

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