Just under a hundred people tuned in to hear about resources for supporting older people and their carers during Covid-19 yesterday (7 July 2020).
We had participants from Scotland, Wales, Newcastle, Cambridge, Birmingham, the Home Counties, the South Coast and the West Country.
Feedback for the 90-minute session has been so positive – a big encouragement to us, as we tried the format for the first time. It enabled members of the public to take part, as well as Anna Chaplaincy network members from across the UK:
Thank you for the invitation to join in today. It was brilliant to connect with 100 existing members and potential new members. Well done for managing such a large Zoom meeting so well!
It always feels like a privilege to be able to share a snapshot of what we are up to here on the south coast. Thanks for kindly including us! We are delighted to be part of such a creative and growing network of like-minded people.
Oh… It was brill! I felt SO inspired by the end.
I thought it was a fantastic opportunity, not just to share resources and be inspired, but also to spread the word about Anna Chaplaincy.
Thanks for the lovely session today… full of inspiring ideas. It was a pleasure to be asked to speak a bit.
It was wonderful. Such an encouragement and joy.
I thought it was really encouraging. It's inspired me to do gift bags for all the carers at my care home.
Thank you for giving such easy access to a really inspiring Zoom gathering. So much more scope than we had thought through.
How wonderful it was to see so many people joining us and to be encouraged hearing from others how they are being creative in these unusual times.
Joining us for the first time was Director of Nursing at Parish Nursing Ministries UK Anne Taylor. Afterwards she said, 'Thank you for the opportunity to be with you this morning and hear about all the wonderful innovations Anna Chaplains are using to serve older people during lockdown.
'It was also very good of you to give me an opportunity to introduce myself and talk briefly about Parish Nursing and good to hear of partnership working between the Anna Chaplain and Parish Nurses in Worthing.
'This was certainly the largest Zoom meeting in my experience and, apart from the expert work you did chairing the meeting, it is impressive to see such commitment from across the UK for your work.'
The conference call was arranged behind the scenes by our coordinator, Alex Burn, and today, she received this message too:
'This is an email to express my heartfelt thanks to YOU and to Debbie who I thought handled the Zoom brilliantly yesterday. Thank you for allowing me to join this session and my first experience of anything to do with Anna Chaplaincy, however, totally inspiring and I have signed up for weekly blogs now.
'I support BRF in prayer and, when I can, make purchases and donations involved with Messy Church, however, with the regular BRF emails (which are brilliant I have to say) I've found out more about Anna Chaplaincy and will be finding out more in due course. For the time being, just really wanted to say thank you very much for yesterday and to all who contributed and were willing to share all their amazing ideas.'
Yes, indeed, we're grateful too to everyone who has provided such helpful feedback for us as we venture in to new territory and adapt to new ways of working.
I think we'll be doing this and other similar sessions again! Watch this space…