Welcome to My Community

Project Summary

Volunteers from the Department of Education (DfE) engaged with the parents and school staff from a Primary School through open consultation and discussion to encourage them to become more of a part of the school community.

Background

The primary school serves a community with many EAL (English as second language), which serves as a barrier to forming the infrastructures which help a school deliver education effectively; for example, parent boards and parent involvement in school initiatives.

Project details

Three volunteers from Department of Education took part in an afternoon of training in facilitation skills. A week later, following some planning, the group visited the school to work with the parents to engage and listen to their thoughts on the school community and ways that it could be improved and ways to encourage more parents increase participation within the school. The deputy head teacher also attended listening and suggesting possible solutions.

° Team building: unique team building experience working with one another in new and challenging environment; interpersonal skills development

° Skill development: received professional facilitation training and applied training in challenging environment

° Legacy: Department for Education volunteers gained experience-based insight into education related policy issues

° Primary School: previously disengaged parents now providing new ideas, eg Cultural Food Day for parents, teachers & children to get to socialise

° New parents were able to discuss their views on the school and it's role in promoting a sense of community

° Legacy: Parents devised buddy system for parents who have newly sent their children to the school

Project objectives

For the Department of Education:

Interact with the community
Work to address a real need in a school
Develop facilitation skills - through training & application during volunteering
Improve confidence and presentation skills of volunteers.

For the school:

Gain support from highly skilled employees
Build stronger sense of cohesion and community through focused discussion with practical outcomes
Impartial mediation during talks about needs and problems
Help DfE staff to gain through grounded experience in schools, which influence policy changes

"It brought parents into the school who don't usually attend parent meetings, so this was successful"

Deputy Head

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In action

Parents had the opportunity voice concerns and develop initiatives to build stronger communication channels with the school. Click here to see full photo set

Welcome to my Community - trai

Volunteers participated in professional facilitation training helping them to prepare for the volunteering project

Challenges

Volunteers had to walk the fine line of guiding and facilitating the discussion
Volunteers had to mediate some heated discussion and lots of different opinions
School staff encountered some strong opinions from parents
Parents were not entirely clear on purpose of the day
Unstructured approach was good in some days but in future a stronger framework of topics would steer it toward additional productive outcomes.

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