Reflection FOUR

Reflection Four – Case study: Auckland City Mission
In the last session we had a case study on the Auckland City Mission and the challenges Diane Robertson, an Auckland City Missioner, has had.
We had many productive discussions and people in class shared their opinions on how to overcome the challenges and help the organisation. For me personally, I had my special point of view which was different from everyone in class. I tried to share my thoughts with everyone but I was afraid that people may think my ideas were weird.
If I were Diane Robertson, I would close down the organisation. It does not mean that I would give up. I would prefer to start all over again. My proposed strategies are:
1) I may change the name
2) Get into partnership with other non-profit organisations
3) Ask for new funding from the government
4) Recruit people, use their experience and talents
5) Focus on promotion and marketing.
I am not sure if the strategies are workable or not, but as a new organisation, I believe the things they often need are: letting people (communities) know who they are, what they are doing, and why people need to support them.

How do these reflect on my position?
Part of my job is letting early childhood teachers, associate teachers, managers and communities know how good MIT’s B.Ed. programme is. I don’t have any marketing or business qualifications or experience, but I learned from practices and mistakes. We have been trying very hard to build our name in the communities. Many teachers know MIT offers a good teacher education programme. As I mentioned in another reflection, there is a lot of competition out there as other teacher education providers also promote their programmes. We therefore need to build a good reputation, not only in the East and South of Auckland, but also in Central Auckland and the North Shore.
I am not too worried about marketing in East and South Auckland, but we are still new in Central Auckland and the North Shore. The early childhood centres and kindergartens out there have already got a good relationship with the education providers, e.g. the University of Auckland, AUT, Unitec, Open Polytechnic and New Zealand Tertiary College.

What to do in the future?
I have arranged with the management team and the Auckland Kindergarten Association that in term one next year, we are going to have an afternoon tea at Epsom Kindergarten. All the Head teachers from the AKA kindergartens will be invited. Also I will try to run an associate teacher in the city next year. As a minimum, my aim is to let the early childhood centres and kindergartens out there know who we are and what kind of programme we are offering.