Flourish Catch Up
Welcome back to Flourish Connection, our second edition.
We the Flourish Management Team are so thrilled by the feedback coming in from all over Asia. The message of Flourish is truly serving its purpose! Many lives are being transformed even from day one, the first session, which means women are grasping the concepts of being their own kind of beautiful, learning to walk in their own shoes and choosing what they allow to define them.
As Lizzie Velasquez reminds us in her TED talk video clip, “We should not allow circumstances or others to define who we are. Our lives were put into our own hands. We are in the driver’s seat choosing which path we take.”
Lizzie chose to not allow her negative situation to define her, but rather use it to build a platform from which she began a positive purposed filled life, which now serves others. We can also do the same.
Stories
Robyn writes:
“This is the testimony of one ‘non- family’ participant who attended Flourish recently. (I shall name her Leila). I asked the Father which woman should I choose to carry the backpack full of stones that represented unforgiveness in Session 4. I told her before she carried this backpack, that I didn’t ask her to do it because I thought she had a lot of unforgiveness in her life, but simply because I felt that she was to do that role in the class on this day. After the course finished, I heard that Leila had shared with other women from the course that this activity was an important moment during the course for her. She said that she had a lot of unforgiveness in her life and when she went home that afternoon, she dealt with it all. The following lesson, Leila was a different person. She went from being shy and serious looking, burdened with a heavy load, to a bubbly, giggly, ‘light’, confident and chatty person.”
A great testimony of a transformed life!
New Places
Momentum is growing and enquires continue to come in from different parts of the world. Chatting with one of our facilitators recently, India was discussed as a future location for Flourish. As we continue to expand, we need more trainers to be trained and resource to be raised. Your thoughts about these things are much appreciated.
We are better together!
New Ideas
In our Course Updates we want to share any new ideas that we have come up with, as well as add any that you may have thought of which would benefit us all.
Here’s an idea shared from Robyn, one of our Facilitators for again: Session #5 ‘We are not the Same’.
“I asked my husband to write some non-threatening questions down that the women could ask in case they didn’t have any of their own. His questions were very helpful and gave the women a lot of insight into the difference between men and women’s thinking. It also helped have some questions on hand which I knew were non-threatening and respectful from a man’s point of view.”
Thank you Robyn for this idea. Having some examples of non-threatening questions ready when running your own course could be helpful.
NOTE
At the moment we are collating questions that come up regularly for this activity of Session 5 and will put some of these in the following edition of the FLOURISH GUIDE.
*If you have any ideas on this or other sessions we would love to hear about them.
Upcoming Training
NEXT MULTINATIONAL TTT (Train the Trainer)
Where: AOGWR Ministry & Operations Centre, Da Nang, Vietnam
When: Monday 22 – Thursday 25 February, 2016
Cost: US 50 which includes Course material, licensing and refreshments
Flourish Team
We the Flourish Development and Management team are here for you so feel free to contact us anytime
Flourish email address: flourish@aogwr.org
NOTE: All stories and photos shared in Flourish Connection are used with permission