Last Saturday (26th October), the Sanctuary in Chichester’s hard working board of trustees met for a strategy meeting. These half-day meetings happen several times a year and are separate from the usual business covered in our monthly board meetings. They are a helpful forum to assess where the organisation is, whether our work is meeting our objectives, i.e. serving our beneficiaries and creating independence rather than dependence, and our strategies looking ahead. We discussed plans for how we will sustain our support for increasing numbers of beneficiaries via grant funding and through continually improving our volunteer and staff offer.
The meeting kicked off with everyone giving an example of something inspirational that had happened in their ‘Sanctuary life’ recently, and we weren’t short of incredible success stories of refugees and asylum seekers, and tear-jerking things beneficiaries had said about the organisation’s support. One person had said, “I don’t have any family left – Sanctuary is my family”, while Drop-In Lead, Jude Clouston described what a privilege it is to see the process of transformation week by week at the drop-in sessions, with individuals going from scared, avoiding eye contact and having zero English, to enjoying socialising, welcoming new arrivals and confidently describing their experiences in English. Jude said, “It makes you think, ‘everything we do is so worthwhile‘”.
Our new Charity Manager & Lead Volunteer Coordinator, Rosemary Hegarty, joined us for the first half of the meeting so we could hear from her the insights she had gained from working with us for nearly three months, with the additional objectivity of a fresh pair of eyes. She gave us plenty to think about in terms of our unique positive attributes to celebrate and hold onto, and issues that need to be considered. The feedback gathered at the volunteer training session the previous week was also really helpful for us in looking at and prioritising areas for improvement.
It was a really valuable meeting, as they always are, and we’ll look forward to reviewing resulting changes in the next one.
Next Saturday, 2nd November, will be our AGM, so we’ll report on that in our November newsletter.