Mentors Needed to Give Communities Chance to Thrive

Tuesday March 15

The Church of Scotland’s Priority Areas team is looking for mentors to help both churches and communities in poor areas thrive.

Chance to Thrive is a church scheme which aims to support priority areas in celebrating and building upon the strengths of people, building better facilities, nurturing enterprise and challenging poverty.

A key part of the scheme is the appointment of an individual mentor to each congregation taking part. The mentor is not the director or chair of the project but uses their expertise to encourage, guide and accompany the local group.

One of the existing mentors is Robin Watson, an Edinburgh architect, who has been working with St Mark’s Church in the Raploch area of Stirling for three years. He said it had been ‘a real joy’ to see the impact of the project.

He said: “It’s really about getting to know a community. It’s a listening role, finding out people’s aspirations, people’s fears and walking their journey with them.

“The impact has been immeasurable. Like most of these communities, these are people who have been told for generations that they are worthless, until they have started to believe it. And through the Chance to Thrive project they have started to achieve little successes and gradually self-confidence has risen, and realisation of their own self-worth has risen.

“The mentor walks alongside and is there as a sounding board and maybe a prompter sometimes. What it is not is the parachuting in of an expert – these communities have seen that too often and they’re sick of it.

“It’s been a joy, a real joy and the pride I have taken in seeing the confidence of the team growing is fabulous.”

Chance to Thrive, which is described as a ‘whole church’ approach to ‘whole community’ thriving, has six new congregations joining the scheme and seven moving on to another phase.

For more information contact Fred Vincent, Chance to Thrive co-ordinator, on 07756 471 904 or fvincent@churchofscotland.org.uk

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