Establishing family life units   

Parish Family Life Units (FLU) will soon be a reality following two weekend training sessions organised by the Archdiocesan Family Life Commission (AFLC). 

Establishing Family Life Units was the theme of the sessions held May 6 and 13 at Centre Point Mall facilities, Chaguanas. The majority of participants were parish representatives who completed Original Pain Therapy sessions, held from January to April 2006.

Main facilitator was an independent management consultant, Nadia Millington, with events promoter, Denise Scott co-facilitating at the May 13 session.

r Robert Llanos, Episcopal Vicar for Family Life and Chair of the AFLC, welcomed all to the sessions on May 6. He said, “Be assured that you could not have chosen a more important ministry than this one at this time in our history. God will surely reward your efforts but not without asking even more of you in the years to come”.

After the welcome, Debbie Garcia, AFLC executive member, gave an inspiring, energetic and encouraging keynote address entitled “Call to serve, building stronger families”.
Issues dealt with were: FLU mission and vision; FLU goals, roles and limitations; Mapping out FLU operations; Creative fundraising and event planning; and Beyond the Charter – Implementation.

Nadia Millington at one of the sessions

The Family Life Unit will be the body responsible for the planning, developing and delivering programmes and services at the parish level. These units will collect data on the needs for programme development, and make use of already packaged material for meeting the needs of families at the parish level. The number of members comprising a FLU will depend on the parish and its size, character and needs.

Establishing FLUs need not require creating everything anew since in many of our parishes arrangements are already in place for responding to the needs of parishioners in the area of family life. Assistance and support will be made available for strengthening and expanding these ministries as necessary.

The process continues in September with an intense four-month training programme for those interested in being parish counsellors.

Some of the comments from the two one-day training seminars: “The main presenter, Ms Millington was thorough. An excellent teacher, she made a dull topic, statistics, very interesting.  Debbie did a very inspiring introduction to the workshop and Day 2’s ‘Trini-Flavour’ introduction by Winston was excellent! Ms Scott did creative tips and pitfalls in event planning.”

“I am now confident that I can carry out my work with the knowledge I have gained from this workshop by Ms Nadia Millington.”

“The information was well-received and the programme was well-structured.”

“New introduction to FLU, so it provided detailed information on the role of the FLU and the steps involved in establishing one, which was really great.”

“The programme was more comprehensive than I expected. The information was professionally delivered. The programme was very informative. The handouts were an excellent idea…the guidelines for development of mission etc. and especially the charter were easy to follow and make going forward more manageable, that is, less fearful of how to proceed.”

All in all, it was felt that the seminar was well-organised and well-received and we look forward to realising its fruit in the future.