Cheryl’s Star Raft Salons

We have now had our second meeting of the Cheryl’s Star Raft Salons group.   We’ve made a bunch of decisions.

Pointing to the Learning (and Teaching) Objectives

Cheryl, brainstorming

First, Cheryl, Shelley, Aaron and David Wetherow brainstormed what we might all do together over the course of a year of monthly meetings.   Our special guests were our friends Karla and Lily Verschoor.  We all had a LOT of ideas and we knew we had to focus on just some things.   Cheryl made a bunch of great decisions.

Karla, Lily and Aaron listening to Cheryl’s ideaHow many people would we involve?

– start with a small invited group

– have lots of fun

– really focus on inviting people in so that we could learn from them and they could learn from us.

The outcome from the year of learning would be that we would all grow our networks, accomplish some personal and career goals, learn more leadership and planning skills and be able to take some of these ideas back to other people we know and learn more together.

We made a budget for the year with our small project grants from Spectrum through the Gaming Commission and C.L.B.C. through a curriculum development grant for our Deepening and Expanding Support Networks project.

Making a list – who can we invite into our circle?

We made up a schedule for what we could do for the year

FEBRUARY:

In our first meeting our two special guests were Jule Hopkins from Community Living B.C. and we talked about interest mapping – what are we interested in and why are we here?  And how do we make plans that lead to more of what we are interested in?

Jule has been the mastermind behind the “Start With Hi” campaign so she had lots of great ideas about how to create a project, make goals and build on successes through planning.   Barb Goode, one of Canada’s most important Self Advocate leaders, was our other guest.  Barb is famous for being a great hostess wherever she goes.  Both she and Cheryl didn’t have PATHs until recently and both of them have accomplished a lot through planning.

We talked about our interests, goals, planning, what we’ll do for the rest of the year and who we might meet to talk to.   Ben Simcoe was our entertainer of the day and did an amazing 87 impressions in about 25 minutes!  Everyone loved it.  Ben and his mom Debby talked about starting a business and some of what they’ve been working on.

Not many people have plans right now and they would like to.  We decided we would do PATHs for anyone in the group who wants one.

One of the things that we talked about was “What is a salon?”  Salons in history were a way of bringing people together to think and share ideas.  Here’s a good video about how people think together in different ways.

example of an asset inventory – our asssets, our introducers, the communities we are part of and/or want to be part of

We did asset inventories for everyone up and down the hallways!

MARCH:

In our second meeting we talked about asset mapping.  We helped each other make an asset inventory poster and it was fun to try to think of ourselves in new positive ways, and then to get some help from people who who had noticed things they appreciated about us.  It was humbling for everyone!

Cheryl showed people her own PATH (check out this video!) and talked about what it was like to invite people in to help her, do some planning and the goals that she had accomplished, and how she’s ready to do some more planning for herself!

Last month we asked a question: how do those people who can walk into a room and just start talking do that?  So this month our special guest was Cheryl Bishop from Make Your Mark training and consulting where she “Inspires and Assists business people to achieve their next level of Success.”  We all learned a LOT about thinking positively about ourselves and how to make connections with others.  People asked great questions and Cheryl Bishop had some great answers!

Next month we’re going to think about the idea of invitation. 

Here is a cool new TED talks video by Amanda Palmer about “the art of asking.”  She says, “When we really see each other, we want to help each other.”  Exactly!

Left to Right: Debby, Aaron, Lori, Cheryl Fryfield, Cheryl Bishop, David, Jerry, Lara (photo by Shelley Nessman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Cheryl: “I just want to say is that, I am honoured to be part of something wonderful. The group I find to be around with, are amazing and I also think they are brave for coming out of their comfort zone.”