Steve’s visit to Thailand in October went well and he was able to help out with WEC’s boarding home for senior students whose parents work all over South-East Asia but whose children study at Grace International School in Chiang Mai. The boarding parents were in urgent need of extra support and a better structure around them to allow time off. we believe that this all now in place. Steve also attended WEC’s Asia Area conference in Chiang Mai where he spoke on safeguarding and had numerous one to one advisory and support meetings with team leaders. He also sold 45 copies of the new book about missionaries’ children called ‘Serving at the ends of the earth; Family life and TCKs’ which he and Gill completed last May.
Steve is now back from Senegal where he visited both Bourofaye Christian School and did safeguarding training for national church leaders. The school is where Steve and Gill served during the 1990s and also where the largest group went from the 2017 course (held at Corsham Baptist last July/August) for staff going to work with missionaries’ children. The school is facing many challenges, not least of which is the never-ending recruitment process for new staff as so many teachers and practical workers only go for one year. They are also working through the implications of raising the minimum boarding age. Steve discussed all of these issues with the school staff as well as presenting a recently produced resource on LGBT+ issues designed to help children (and adults) from Africa and Asia where LGBT+ is rarely discussed prepare for a return to the West where it is one of the hottest subjects on the agenda. He also distributed more copies of their book.
The safeguarding training with national churches is a new departure for Steve, although one or two colleagues within WEC have already been asked to do similar training in other countries. The church, despite being very small and having few resources, now runs schools and nurseries as well as its own Sunday schools, and there is general alarm in the country about a rash of false claims of abuse against teachers in the hope of blackmail money, so the training should be very timely. This training will involve more travel than normal, including down to the south-east of the country.