VES Team End of Week Update | Spotlight on Diligence
Dear wonderful VES team,
Hope you are well - and thank you for another really good week together at VES.
This has been a demanding week to serve, with the heat making everything harder. I want to say a huge thank you for the patience, flexibility and resilience you have shown. The team served really well in less-than-ideal conditions - and VES still felt welcoming, calm and purposeful.
Full house on Monday
Spotlight this week: Diligence
So, one of our values I found myself especially grateful for this week was diligence. It may not sound like the flashiest word, but it is a deeply important one. Diligence is what helps a community keep serving well - not only when things are easy, exciting or new, but when the room is hot, the week is long, the lack of board markers is increasingly annoying and the academic year is nearing the finish line!
In asylum, charity and ministry spaces, it can be easy to drift into box-ticking, “just getting by”, or quietly lowering standards because the work is hard and the needs are great. At VES, we hold a different standard: to serve people with care, consistency and excellence all the way through the year. Not because everything has to be perfect, but because people matter - and because what we do is worth doing well.
A good scripture we hold on to is Galatians 6:9 “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” As we tick into July, we’re on the final lap of this academic year - let’s keep cheering each other, and the students, onwards! This coming week: “VES: Our School”
This coming week we will have our next bespoke VES teaching unit - and this one is about the school itself. As part of the unit, we will be asking students to fill in feedback forms. This is their chance to tell us what we are doing well, what has helped them, and where they think we could improve. We always want VES to be a learning community - not only for students learning English, but for us as a team learning how to serve, teach, welcome and build community better. Thank you in advance for helping students understand and complete those forms well.
Key dates - please note
Final VES session of the year - Thursday 16th July
Our final session of the academic year, in line with mainstream UK schools, will be on Thursday 16th July. This will be a celebration morning, and ALL TEAM are welcome - whether Thursday is normally your VES day or not. More details will follow, but these are always really special mornings, and we would love you to be there if you can.
VES Team Celebration Brunch - Monday 20th July
Then on Monday 20th July we will have our VES Team Celebration Brunch. This will be a chance to have some fun, relaxed time together, to celebrate you, and to give thanks for all that God has done through VES this academic year. I would really love you to be there - please sign up via the event page here: https://croydonvineyard.churchsuite.com/events/yrxhl5wv
VES Dashboard - Week at a Glance
● 17 classes delivered across 4 days
● Plus 2 creche sessions and 1 youth drop-in
● 233 student sessions enabled
● 68 team sessions given
● Weekly participation number: 336
● +87% increase on this time last year
KEY STAT: 110 Ice lollies / ice creams devoured in approximately 3 and a half minutes on both Wednesday and Thursday
Have a fantastic weekend, especially between 10pm and midnight tomorrow night if you’re supporting England!