Hello <<First Name>>

In this edition of our Training Bulletin, we’ve got lots of upcoming webinars, including Writing Better Bids, Launching the Planner Tool, Teaching and Facilitation, plus lots more! Take a read of what’s coming up and sign-up to webinars that are of interest for you and your centre. 

As the coronavirus situation continues to develop in the UK, and with strict measures in place restricting people’s movements, we must work together to help each other through the digital world. 

We’re keen to support our centres the best way that we can. We know this is a challenging time and many of you are no longer able to provide face to face support. If you are still providing virtual support through your centre, you can edit your centre's description by logging into the Online Centres Network website so anyone that views your centre on our map can check what support you are providing.  

We’ve created a resource page on the Online Centres Network website to help your learners, staff and volunteers access relevant resources, funding, and virtual support. We hope you find this useful, we will be updating this page daily with more useful links that we come across. 

Thank you to everyone who has completed the coronavirus impact survey so far. We want to do what we can to help, and we know you will have both challenges and solutions that we haven’t thought of. The survey remains open and we’ll be updating you soon on what we’re doing as a response to your ideas and feedback.

Last Friday, we held our ‘Managing Coronavirus as an Online Centre’ webinar to share the resources our Learning Team have created to help you find the most accurate health information and resources online. Over 100 centres joined the webinar and we hope you all found it useful. We know there will have been some individuals who couldn’t attend, so we are repeating this next Friday, 3 April. 

Thank you to those centres who have shared insight and resources on social media - do keep using Twitter and the Online Centres Network Facebook Group to actively share information and chat to one another.

Buddy with a Good Things Foundation member of staff

At this particularly challenging time, we want to offer you the opportunity to be paired up with a member of the Good Things Foundation team, giving you the chance to build a relationship and gain support from your buddy.

Our team members will contribute their time, connections and expertise to support your organisation, signposting you to helpful tools and resources, advising and listening to you, and where necessary seeking advice or information from colleagues and partners on your behalf.

Express your interest below (please note if you have already expressed an interest there is no need to do so again and we will be in touch soon).

Join our zoom sessions

Over the coming months we know many of you will be facing new challenges in light of the current situation. From recent conversations it’s clear Online Centres are thinking more than ever about sustainability, delivering support remotely and how to operate a community focused business from home. 

Although we’ll continue providing resources and guidance, we know the best ideas are always out there in the Network, and that’s why we need your help to support other Online Centres.

Using Zoom (a new and very popular video conferencing service), we hope to bring together a large number of different organisations to have a virtual meeting, something that’s completely new for Good Things Foundation on this scale. Whether you want advice on a challenge, have something to share or just want to put some faces to names and meet new people, this is a fantastic opportunity to do so. 

Representatives from our Network and Learning teams will be facilitating the session, making sure as many participants as possible get the chance to talk using the chat panel and their computers microphones. We hope to see you there. 

Mental Health Awareness- Common Mental Health Conditions (Signs and Symptoms support) 

Anne Hinchcliffe (Chartered Psychologist) at Serentini 

As part of the series of mental health webinars, this session will cover some of the signs and symptoms of common mental health conditions and the impact these can have on an individual. A discussion will be focussed around the support available to people experiencing issues so that we can seek support ourselves or help others to do so.   

Date and time: 1 April, 12:30-1pm

Launching the Planner Tool 

Laura Faulkner (Curriculum Development Manager) at Good Things Foundation

The Planner is a tool designed to help learners know where to start their digital learning. Following a series of questions, it generates a personalised plan of initial learning. This session will demonstrate features of the planner and how to use it to support your learners. 

Date and time: 16 April, 1-2pm 

Writing Better Bids

Sally Deith (Self-Employed Trainer) 

To help you better understand the bid writing process, write more effective applications and improve your success rates, this training session covers key issues for funders, key questions in funding applications, and common reasons why applications are rejected. 

Date and time: 21 April, 2-4pm 

Teaching & Facilitation Part 1 & 2

Sally Deith (Self-Employed Trainer) 

This training session is for individuals who want to develop their facilitation and mentoring skills, those who are thinking of moving into teaching adults or already teaching formal courses but want to share ideas and good practise. This training is delivered through two 2 hour webinars with part 1 covering teaching skills and part 2 addressing theories of learning. 

Date and time: 21 April, 10am-12pm