I am nearing the end of my very first day as the North West Manager for Aid to the Church in Need. This diary is a project to chart the projection (mostly upwards, I hope!) and the development of this new post. Wish me luck!
Aid to the Church in Need is a fantastic international Catholic charity, working tirelessly on behalf of those Christians throughout the world who risk their lives and futures every day to maintain and to spread the Faith. Thousands of ACN volunteers and devoted staff work so hard to raise awareness of the plight of suffering and persecuted Christians, as well as to raise funds for them to train seminarians for the priesthood, to support communities of religious sisters, to provide essentials such as cars and bicycles to enable priests to look after their parishioners, to distribute bibles in hundreds of languages and to build and restore churches all over the world. It’s as simple as that—a whole charity devoted to helping Catholics and Orthodox Christians maintain the Faith under even the most dire circumstances. Some limited humanitarian aid is offered when needed (ACN has so far sent over £2.5 million to Syria to support the many homeless and bereft Christians there), but essentially we are about keeping the Church alive in those parts of the world where external forces daily threaten to wipe it out. How could I not want to help with this?
The new post of NW Manager is a challenging one in that I have responsibility for a very large geographic area which stretches from Telford to the Scottish border and from the Pennines to Anglesey. It includes four dioceses (Lancaster, Salford, Shrewsbury and Wrexham) and one archdiocese (Liverpool). This can be further broken down—get ready for this!—into 550+ parishes; 450+ primary schools, around 80 secondary schools and about fifteen universities. I haven’t even begun to count the number of religious houses or Catholic special interest groups or Orthodox parishes and I am far too nervous to think about the overall population of Catholics in this part of the world. Many, many troops to marshal; much, much help for the persecuted will be forthcoming—I just know it!
My duties include offering support to the four truly dedicated Area Secretaries who offer appeals in parishes throughout the region and often serve as our very first point of contact between the charity and our support base. I will also co-ordinate a growing force (soon to be an army!) of Parish Reps who volunteer to keep our profile high in their parishes and local communities. I plan on befriending many of those involved in Catholic education throughout the North West: primary and secondary school heads, RE co-ordinators and chaplains. I am keen to offer my thanks and support to our major benefactors from this region as well as to those who give regularly—in amounts large and small—to help us support the many (over 5000 per year!) projects we undertake each year. I shall also initiate various awareness- and profile-raising strategies involving social media and events. Phew! It is exhausting just thinking about it all at this point.
I am working from my house in Lancaster, from my dining room table in fact (at least until I have set up a proper workspace somewhere in my house)—so now, for the first time, ACN has a proper, actual base in the North West. The least we deserve, I think, given the support and commitment to ACN demonstrated by so many Catholics in this part of England! The head office of the charity is located in Sutton in Surrey and is staffed by some wonderful people to whom I intend to introduce you in future entries. Suffice it for now to say that my line manager is the charming, and extremely capable, Portia Borrett, Head of Human Resources, and the big boss is Neville Kyrke-Smith, the National Director of ACN UK. Everyone has been very kind and welcoming to me (which is much appreciated in the face of this rather daunting brief!)
I’ll fill you in on a bit more about me and how I got here in my next entry, but for now a quick summary of today’s activities. Following a much appreciated welcome call from Portia just after 9 this morning (I mentioned that she is charming AND efficient!), I got stuck in with planning my strategy for the rest of 2014. I have completed the overall view for the year and will spend part of tomorrow breaking it down into manageable (just about!) monthly chunks. I also contacted each of the four Area Secretaries for the North West to touch base and to ask them to think about when we might meet up for a chat. I spent a bit of time organizing my ‘workspace’ (aka my dining room) and began thinking about what form I’d like my own parish appeals to take. It’s coming up to 4pm, so I’m going to spend another hour on my 2014 annual strategy before I close up shop to check on my teenagers and walk my dog. All in all, a good first day. Watch this space for future instalments about how we can all work together to help persecuted Christians all over the world.
Thanks for reading! Caroline
No comments:
Post a Comment