MPCP is incredibly grateful to be the recipient of grant funding to provide 6 courses for disadvantaged families over the next 2 years and to undertake essential development work. This means that, for the first time, our members can be paid for doing the essential ‘groundwork’ to establish MPCP more securely for the future.
Our mission - that of making mindfulness courses and workshops available to parents who can least afford it or are experiencing serious challenges in their parenting - remains. The problem has always been how to do this in a sustainable manner. Funding applications are incredibly time-consuming. ‘Stop and start’ has been the name of the day. Despite this we have achieved an incredible amount over the last 6 years – we have done everything we had in our 5-year plan – and more. But (and it was a big But) we couldn’t go on working in this way. We now have to become more focused and find ways of generating income in new ways to support our philanthropic activities.
So now, with the support of a business coach, we’re inching forward to a more secure future. We’re changing how we work together. We’re also learning that money is not a dirty word: we have to develop ‘mindful business minds’ and create new income streams by being creative and offering more resources to more families. How will we do this? This is the work now in progress. But it will involve embracing the role of online ‘products’, targeting our mindfulness support to families in different circumstances, developing our website and social media presence, and being more visible as the ‘go to’ organisation for parent and family mindfulness resources.
And if we look inwards, maybe in the course of a short Body Scan, we can see, very clearly, how everything is in flux. The breath, sensations, thoughts emotions - all shifting....adjusting.... accommodating, rising, and falling away. Moment by moment, the times are surely a-changing – in every way we can imagine …. You might want to try a (very short) body scan to see once more just how true this is .....