How are communities contributing to the clusters march towards ‘GROWTH’?
A mention:
Book 1 which is being facilitated by Pat Irvine have decided to call themselves the Iqbal Ma’ani Study Circle, in memory of Kamal Ma’ani’s brother. The collaborators:Kamal Ma’ani, Camelia Ma’ani, Vida Backwell
Report by Area Coordinator Mahan Hashemi-zadeh
The friends in Cluster 4 are happily looking forward to a cluster-wide Reflection Meeting on Sunday 18 September in Cookstown.
The Book 3 tutored by Michelle O'Mahony, which has engendered such excitement in Derry city has almost finished and will see seven collaborators equipped with Book 3 skills. Michelle is extremely busy at present; she will soon tutor an intensive Book 3 and a Book 1 with five collaborators. These study circles are in the process of starting up. It is an interesting aspect of the work in this cluster that a number of believers have elected to do some of the books a second time, feeling that by so doing they gain a deeper understanding of the process.
Area Coordinator Lesley Taherzadeh O’Mara
The first Teacher’s Encounter was held on 17 September in Hackney House. The termination of the George Townsend School released a wealth of knowledge and dedicated effort into the community to start local children’s classes. Twenty-four participants, joined to share their ideas and experience in holding children’s classes open to all. They came together from Antrim, Ballymena, Belfast, Castlereagh, Craigavon, Limavady, Londonderry, Magherafelt, and Omagh. Also present were our Auxiliary Board Members Denis Coyle and Anne O’Sullivan.
At the conclusion of this meeting the classes started or soon to start were: one started and four to begin soon in Cluster One, one class in Cluster three, one class started and one soon to start in Cluster four, three classes in Cluster five that have already begun and two classes started with one soon to start in Cluster Six. This gives a grand total of fourteen committed Children’s Classes in Northern Ireland.
However this is not all, we have the offer of five more classes yet to be confirmed. The children’s class co-ordinator Patricia Jamshidi laboriously made up Children’s Class Packs – there may not be enough! Anyone who is intending to start a children’s class please contact her. The children’s class resource person is Rosemary Johnston.
The next Teacher’s Encounter is to be held on Saturday 28 January at 3pm - put this date in your diary.
Children’s Class Coordinator Pat Jamshidi
The summer program for the current junior youth is over. Now we move now to the new school year. We have learnt a lot thus far and this information has been stored on the Training Institute’s database for future reference. There have been other developments happening which I’ll not go into now but it looks promising and off course it will be shared in due course.
Other news: Four youth have attended the week long animator training course provided by the English Training Institute Board in Cranmore, Bristol in late August. Soon we will arrange to provide training for everyone who has completed the sequence of courses. So stayed tuned.
Report by Junior Youth CoordinatorAfnan Hashemi-zadeh
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