Sharing joy, challenge and mission stories
Good Shepherd Services
There are forty Good Shepherd service locations around Taiwan with variety of services for children, youth, women, indigenous families, single parents, new immigrant families, and people affected by trafficking. In April 2019, we gathered partners from different fields to share the stories of joy, challenge, and core values in order to enrich our spirit.

World Cafe workshop sessions
Six sessions of world cafe workshop were facilitated by Mission and Core Values facilitator, Joan Wu. Joan invited 24-30 partners in each session to review ‘vision, core values and mission’, as well as four levels of listening (downloading, debating, empathic, and generative). Joan facilitated partners to share ‘joy, challenge, and mission stories’ in a 4 -5 persons group for one hour; meanwhile, members of each group wrote and drew their sharing in one poster to present to everybody. Towards the end, we evaluated the workshop and shared personal enlightenment.

Insights
Overall, the majority of partners were filled with the spirit of joy, honor, and communion through the workshop. Below are the pearls of our joy, challenge, and core value insights.

Joy
*Closure or replacement of a client could be a joy.
*Majority of partners reported the joy came from the process of team building and team work for same services.
*Friendships among co-workers give us great joy.
*Although the task could be very challenging, joy was experienced in witnessing client’s recovery process.
*One significant joy was when partners found ‘who I am ‘ through the services.
*Experiencing a great joy when government policy changed due to our advocacy for victims/survivors.
*Through the service for people who are marginalized, we learn what resilience is, for ourselves too.
*A number of staff stated that salary is a source of joy.

Challenge
*Majority of partners reported it was very tough to embrace client’s negative emotion and outbursts.
*The stigma experienced by clients in the society is a significant obstacle for clients to attain the skills and capacity of resilience.
*Conflicts within team partners or volunteers can be very hard to deal with.
*Unrealistic demands from society and government regulations cause staff a significant amount of stress.
*The task to help clients to have conciliation relationship with original family members was the other challenge due to prior trauma experience among family members.
*Partners experienced emotional turbulence while serving clients, requiring a healing process.
*Closure or replacement of a client can be quite distressing for staff and clients due to several years of service relationship with the clients.

Core values
*Our vision of one person as of more value than an entire world inspires lots of partners to exercise close to zero rejection of marginalized children, youth, women, new immigrants, indigenous families and those affected by trafficking in persons.
*We channel the love of mercy through accepting client ‘s negative emotions and comments.
*Zeal is the power energy to build reconciliation with clients and related persons.
*The value of respect leads us to let clients make their own choices and, in the meantime, we also learn to respect ourselves and others.

Two participants stated:

‘It is great to have GS services in Taiwan.’
‘Core values give us the direction for services.’

 

Workshop photos