Please see the below letter from OSFO President, Kevan Gosper, inviting your organisation to become involved in our HOPE Leaders program:
Letter from the OSFO President
Vary rarely does a project in any organisation get implemented successfully without a champion. In creating agents for positive change in sport we have acknowledged this and have developed a process for identifying and building capacity in wellbeing leaders (HOPE Leaders – Heads of Positive Engagement), empowering them to be agents for positive change. Armed with their Wellbeing Agency, their capacity to intentionally use Wellbeing Literacy, they are equipped to pay forward their learning and impact positive change.
HOPE Leaders share responsibility for whole school, sport, organisation or community wellbeing implementation, and undertake high quality training to build their knowledge, skills and capabilities. Armed with this experience, HOPE Leaders recruit a team to lead their organisations or community groups through a positive change process in their unique contexts, and out into the community.
One of the ways HOPE Leaders create positive change is through the inspiring use of Wellbeing Literacy. Wellbeing Literacy is a common language for a community to explore and nurture wellbeing; it enables all members of that community to build wellbeing skills, capabilities and processes and establishes a positive culture through the collective use of conversations and intentional actions which promote, build and enable flourishing.
Our pathway to establishing Wellbeing Literacy more broadly within our school or sporting communities is a viral one – our lighthouse model. Our HOPE Leaders champion the learning, living and then leading of the spread of the essential principles of Wellbeing Literacy. The goal for the HOPE Leader is to develop a personal practice in building wellbeing capabilities for themselves and then inspire others to do the same (Wellbeing Agency).
They seek to sow the seeds of potential in others, this is how they measure their IMPACT.
The model of IMPACT provides the ‘ways of BEing’ for our HOPE Leaders. It is a framework to support the implementation process within their unique context; school, sport, community group or family. IMPACT has been chosen because the concepts within it create the agency (passion, power and purpose) required for a HOPE Leader to ‘live’ their work and transform others, in the hope of growing a team of people to support improving wellbeing, engagement and adaptability for all members of a community.
The IMPACT acronym has two purposes:
- It reminds us how important is to ‘know the IMPACT’ – it keeps us looking out for the positive change happening around us. Noticing and recording.
- It helps to guide the development of the knowledge, skills, processes and dispositions for creating transformation in themselves and others.
IMPACT
Be Inspiring (share stories of success internally and externally)
Be a Mentor (an autonomous, supportive coaching process to help build capacity in self and others) – strength-based approach
Be Purposeful – (work is driven by purpose; have a clear ‘why’ in mind for every program, project or process undertaken – it helps to define impact and how it might be measured)
Work with Agency – (a self-determined approach to learning, living and leading the building of wellbeing literacy in self and seeding this in others)
Be Compassionate – (to self and others) – Wellbeing Literacy knowledge comes in here
Be Trustworthy – (consistent over time)
The Lighthouse is a symbol of HOPE and it is one we use to promote our HOPE Leaders
- Direction – towards optimal wellbeing
- Light – energising our schools and community
- Safety – wellbeing and engagement
The HOPE Leader roles continue to develop as they are invited to participate in a Community of Practice. Here they share their stories of successes, the challenges they need to overcome, but most importantly they get to participate in generalised reciprocity. This is where they are encouraged to seek help and get the opportunity to help and support other HOPE Leaders. This cross pollination enables the big potential of collective efficacy to be realised, as we have learnt from our experience that, as Aristotle famously said, “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”
Edwina Ricci
OSFO Special Projects