Resources for Good Practice
Update January 2013
Member Care in Mission/Aid
Cool Tools--for Ourselves and Others
Stay updated with key member care resources for your work in mission/aid.
Spread the word—share this Update with your colleagues and networks.
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The two sets of resources this month are examples of tools from the latest entries at our CORE-MC weblog. The first set are supportive tools for the commmon expperiences of depression and grief (books and videos). The second set help you to review the important area of work-life balance (self-assessment inventories). Note: another example of the tools that you can access for free on our weblog is the updated version of the CHOPS Adjustment Inventory (28 December 2012) with new items pertaining to A4 workers.
This month we are celebrating six years and 200 entries on our CORE-MC weblog. The weblog offers reflections, resources, and research for good practice in member care. It also includes a growing emphasis on what we believe is the next crucial phase for global member care in mission/aid: crossing sectors in the service of humanity. You can receive new entries automatically to your email address—just go to the CORE-MC weblog and type in/submit your email address in the “Follow by Email” space. It’s a great way to stay current with the member care field.
Warm greetings from Geneva,
Kelly and Michèle O’Donnell
Sunflower field, in the countryside outside of Geneva.
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Resource Area One
Helping with Depression and Grief
Watch this four-minute animated video on depression.
Depression was the theme of the 2012 World Mental Health Day (10 October 2010). Depression currently accounts for the third highest burden of disease globally, and is predicted to be the highest burden by 2030. Depression is significantly higher for females than males and is the leading cause of disease burden for women across all countries and income levels. Suicide (which is closely related to depression) is the second most common cause of death among young people globally. Have a look at a creative animation piece on depression (four minutes, video) called I Had a Black Dog by Matthew Johnstone. It is based on his book Living with a Black Dog: His Name is Depression.
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Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss
(click on link above to watch the opening three minutes of the video)
“Cry when you want to, laugh when you can.”
Grief. Tear Soup is a tool to help people deal with grief and loss. It creatively tells the story of a person who is dealing with a major loss via the metaphor of making soup. Tear Soup is in three formats: book, DVD (17 minutes), and Power Point. The book is written simply with full-page illustrations to complement the many principles and “ingredients” described (also in Spanish). We have found that people from many backgrounds and both young and old are able to “savor” this story and easily apply it to their own soup making process. Tear Soup is available from Grief Watch: Resources for Bereaved Families and Professional Caregivers. See their web site for more materials including Grief Facts and Helpful Links.
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Resource Area Two:
Assessing Work-Life Balance
Pieter Bruegal the Elder, The Harvest, 1565
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Here are two self-assessment tools to get a better understanding of work-life balance for ourselves and others. Have a go with them!
1. Self-Care and Lifestyle Balance Inventory (25 items), developed by the Headington Institute.
2. Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL 5), available in 17 languages. According to the website, the ProQOL measures “the negative and positive effects of helping others who experience suffering and trauma. The ProQOL has sub-scales for compassion satisfaction, burnout and compassion fatigue.”
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Final Thoughts
Twenty+ Years of Tools: 1992, 2002, 2012
We are sharing these tools from the CORE-MC weblog (2012) in order to support personal growth, relational health, organizational development, and overall effectiveness for mission/aid workers. Hopefully you will find them to be creative, useful, and at times even fun. They are some of our favorites.
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These items also complement the 12 tools for “Running Well and Resting Well” that we included as a chapter in Doing Member Care Well (2002). More tools and guidelines specifically for team building are included in our “Tools for Team Viability” article, in the member care book we edited in 1992. Just click the links above to access these two articles.