Keeping up with the CCFs!
Updated: Nov 10, 2022
Impart recently welcomed 20 new Community Care Fellows (CCFs), and they have been bustlin’! Read on to find out more about how the CCFs have been preparing to care for Impart’s volunteers.
CCF 2022: Batch Training
12th March was an exciting day, when Impart kicked off this year’s CCF cycle with an in-person training session! The session was conducted by Narash, Impart’s own Executive Director and psychotherapist, who equipped the new CCFs with the contexts and competencies to support other volunteers. Examples of the content covered include Person-Centric Theories, Coregulation, and Understanding Burnout.
Urban Treasure Hunt by Guinea Pig Games
On 11 June 2022, the CCFs and CCFees had a day of fun in Sentosa! The group participated in an urban treasure hunt organized by Guinea Pig Games, and spent the morning discovering landmarks that may be easily taken for granted in that area. Most importantly, it was a valuable time for all volunteers to bond and build ties—ties that will carry them through this CCF cycle.
Art-Jam with a Twist: An experiential self-care event
Effective care meets people where they are at, and is tailored to people’s needs and desires. Thus, after a round of consultation (via Telegram polls), the CCFs organized the most upvoted activity:a self-care art jam! But with a twist! Instead of focusing on each person’s own paintings, participants took turns building on each other's pieces in 5-minute sprints.
A wash of orange morphed into a sunset on one of the canvasses, and what began as blocks of color eventually turned into an abstracted fruit salad in another. Through this process of sharing their paintings with each other, they had the opportunity to open up conversations about calibrating expectations, giving up control, and going with the flow.
InPsychful Training Sessions
The CCFs also underwent an emotional fitness training programme by a local psychotherapy practice, InPsychful. Spanning 4 group sessions and 2 individual coaching sessions, the CCFs were guided through content related to emotional expression, regulation, boundaries and resilience. Such trainings tie into one of Impart’s core beliefs —that volunteers are not just human resources to be managed, but individuals to be cared for, and partners to be empowered. We do not settle for status quo on this front, and constantly consider new knowledge and skills we can extend to our CCF volunteers.
Monthly Supervision Sessions
CCFs themselves need to be cared for, even as they care for Impart’s carers. Monthly supervision sessions provide the space for this; Impart’s staff check-in with each CCF and ensure that everyone’s needs are heard, with best attempts made at crafting pathways forward. CCFs raise their challenges and facilitate discussion with other CCFs, exchanging ideas and co-creating solutions. This enables through experience to put theories about volunteer engagement into practice.
Impart's Community Care Fellows (CCFs) are volunteers who are empowered to improve organizational health and nurture a supportive culture within Impart. They do so by providing psycho-social support for other volunteers — a partial reframing of the “volunteer manager” role.