Alive to the World Educational Charity Trustees’ report for the year from 1 June 2022 to May 2023
Mexico World Congress of Families September 2022, attended by 9,000 people
Attending major international events enables us to speak with authority and bring in some of the latest science in the field of family which many people in England appear to lack. A key speaker said that even in Mexico ordinary good families cannot expect to pass on their values to their children without the aid of external reinforcement. This underlines the value of a programme like ATW.
We also heard from a mentor to blended families that it can take 5-7 years to heal the web of relationships that can arise outside a straightforward married family. This puts paid to the idea that teaching children at school that “any couple is family” is a kindness to those from broken homes who may be aching inside in all sorts of ways.
Week of talks in Kazakhstan November 2022
Belinda Brown and Louise and David Kirk gave a full week of talks in Kazakhstan. They worked under pressure to prepare their respective presentations; these knitted together into an extraordinary whole, showing how closely the various aspects of family life based on Christian moral teaching complement each other. Our hosts faced practical difficulties in creating a Russian edition of ATW, given the small number of Catholics and Protestants in a largely Muslim and Orthodox country, but our talks were well received, and we all learnt an enormous amount. Archbishop Peta himself attended our presentations in Astana.
Presentations and tables at non-Catholic events
Louise Kirk has made short presentations/had tables of ATW books at the Christian Schools Trust; Marriage, Sex and Culture Group; Family Education Trust; and the Association of Christian Teachers (online). She was invited to attend the Alex Timpson Trust launch of its research into schools and looked after children. At each of these events, she made useful contacts and built up her own knowledge. We have smartened up our presence with a new logoed display cloth and attractive leaflets.
Books have been sold to a variety of teachers, catechists and private buyers in England and abroad.
Events and contacts with fellow Catholics
Contact with schools was hampered by the strong support that the Catholic Education Service has given to a single set of resources produced by another
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company; these are less well-founded than ATW on scientific evidence. We have approached the Catholic Union (CU) to see if there may be ways to encourage a more open approach. We have also contacted individual dioceses with our materials.
Louise Kirk was well received at a weekend for Catholic Educationalists at the Christian Heritage Centre, where she met a teacher who tried out ATW with difficult pupils and found them very successful in instilling sound values and helping them settle into the school as good students making positive contributions.
We have also developed close relations with the Theology of the Body Network UK.
Home schoolers
We have prepared the ground for contact with various home-schooling bodies which we shall be following up.
Other
Louise Kirk remains a core member of the Lords & Commons Family & Child Protection Group. She was part of a working group to produce a report on the role of family in society and how to support it; she contributed the section on motherhood.
She critiqued Miriam Cates’s much lauded paper on some of the horrors included in RSE teaching, pointing out that the roots of the problems we are now witnessing in school programmes go further back. She remains in touch with Mrs Cates’s office.
She also wrote a paper outlining what a positive approach to RSE might look like; this has been well received.
David Kirk
28 March 2023
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| 2022 | 2023 | |
|---|---|---|
| Income | ||
| School sponsors | 11444.82 | |
| Christmas Appeal | 1365 | |
| Gift Aid | 4403.25 | |
| University Sponsors | 3978 | |
| latrines appeal | 3500 | |
| general donations | 9164.2 | |
| total | 33044.99 | 33855.27 |
| Expence | ||
| Farming Kyemula | 2820.72 | 2433.18 |
| Farming Namayili | 1322.14 | 445.29 |
| Namayili School/Sponsorship | 4557.32 | 5007.46 |
| Kyemula School/Sponsorship | 10458.86 | 10439.83 |
| Kyemula General | 1301.4 | |
| Namayili General | 200 | |
| Students | 7948.24 | 8332.46 |
| Other | 571.69 | 1641.26 |
| christmas | 1274.77 | |
| latrines | 6196.12 | |
| menstrual cups | 977.27 | |
| Total Expense | 29180.37 | 36747.64 |
| Proft/ (loss) | 3864.62 | -2892.37 |
| Opening balance | ||
|---|---|---|
| Halifax | 591.73 | 2137.21 |
| Starling | 5612.59 | 7931.73 |
| total | 6204.32 | 10068.94 |
| Closing Balance | ||
| Halifax | 2137.21 | 993.03 |
| Starling | 7931.73 | 6183.54 |
| 10068.94 | 7176.57 | |
| Movement | ||
| 3864.62 | -2892.37 |