Humbled, challenged and thoughts confirmed.

Its difficult to really know where to begin I have seen a lot different things met some very interesting people and discovered a fair few things not only about myself but more importantly about the work we have been doing at Prospex. One of the most valuable experiences for me over this last stage of my quest has not only been to share my heart with others but more importantly to discover that there are many more out there who share the same passion and have a huge heart for the young people of our world. I’m totally embarrassed to say that I didn’t think that I would find that. It was in my arrogance and tunnel vision attitude that I thought we were the only ones who cared, who had the passion, the ideas, the drive and the commitment to quality. Yet I am so pleased to say that I have been very much humbled to discover that of course we are not on our own and in actual fact there are many more out there the unsung heroes of our profession that are working exceptionally hard to make our world and the lives of young people they come into contact with better through the two P’s Perseverance and Persistence.
Yes ok so we do it differently, we have our unique way of expression, not all of them sit comfortably or are necessarily the way I’d do it if I was honest, but hey does that make it wrong? Not at all, of course not. That would be stupid! The important thing for me is to realise our uniqueness of projects and the individual young people and that we are living in a very dynamic and creative world and there for many of our young people are the same. You can no longer use the term one size fits all, we are all different and how then can we then expect to relate to our young people through those old dated ideas and ways that in their time may have worked so well, yet in this modern world have very little effect.
How can we expect issues and problems to go away or be healed without looking at the bigger picture the route cause and then effectively addressing each in turn. To be honest with you I don’t think its good enough today to just deal with a behaviour and be satisfied that the problem has gone away because the question still remains, Why? And it is only when you address that question will you effectively change a life for the long term.
A lot of the projects I have come across in my journey are working very hard to do exactly that effectively changing lives for the better and it was a great joy and encouragement to see. There were to main themes running through all of them and when I spoke to young people and workers alike they all said the same things. The two main principles for them, the secrets of their success and the reason many young people where coming back to projects was for the Time Spent with them and the Relationships that they had managed to build. So, tell me something I didn’t know? I hear you say well, yes it is not rocket science it is simple. The question I ask you then is this Why do we not do more of it? Why are we so bad at it? And how can we encourage more to stand up and do it?
Next week I go to the States where I will be hopefully discovering more about myself, the work we are doing and how we can be doing it better after all our young people deserve it!! Don’t they?
I’ll keep you posted!