NET Connect 03 (February 2023): Lay all your love on me
We — about 16 North East Together members — met for our third NET Connect event: Lay all your love on me on 14 February (see what we did there…?).
Lay all your love on me…
We are working, volunteering and leading in extraordinary times — tough and uncertain times. The recent years have been extremely challenging for all of us. And now we’re facing another crisis. One that again affects our organisations, us and our teams, and the people and communities we serve.
The news and our inboxes are full of bad news and difficult things. And we often put other people’s needs before our own.
Our intention for the event was to pause, look to what’s good and be gentle to ourselves.
In pairs: About me and how I’m doing today
We started off with a couple of rounds of virtual impromptu networking, chatting in random pairs to say more about ourselves and how we’re doing today.
All together: The me, we and us of love and care
We know a lot of our work is about showing love and care to others, to the people and communities our organisations and our activitism serve. We’re always working really hard to meet other people’s needs, and don’t always take good care of ourselves and each other in our organisations.
Our prompts were about changing that…
- Me: What is giving you a boost right now?
- We: How do you show love and care to the people you work or volunteer with?
- Us: When you look around the region what are you loving about what people/organisations/groups are doing to help and support others?
We used our tried and tested popcorn technique back in the whole group with one person starting off responding to the prompts, and the next person coming in based on a connection or synergy with the previous person.
All together: Building on what we’ve heard
We heard lots of wisdom from each other’s answers to the me, we and us prompts…so building on and making sense of what we had heard we took turns to share How can we be more caring in our interactions with others?
Join us next time
Our next NET Connect is Tuesday 12 September 2023. Join us.
About NET Connect
NET Connects are regular short online gatherings for NET members and networks friends to connect, form and deepen relationships for mutual support and to build community. This is an opportunity for us all to get to know each other better, to grow and nurture our relationships, understand our areas of interest, and identify opportunities to collaborate. We think this will contribute towards reducing isolation, strengthening personal resilience and building social capital. These events are a short remix of November 2021’s event North East Together 22: Getting to know you and your leadership. We use guided networking to help us have a great conversation together…welcoming new members and reconnecting with existing members.
About North East Together
North East Together is the network for social change leadership in the north east.
Our collective mission here at NET is to create the conditions, and platform for, collaboration to become the norm in the north east and to nurture a healthier social change system. Together we can do this.
We believe bringing leaders together to tackle social injustice will create positive change — in our communities, organisations and the social systems we live and work within. Our network offers mutual support, enables collaboration and inspires social leaders. It’s for leaders from the voluntary, charity, social enterprise, education, public and private sectors. It’s for experienced, new and future leaders of organisations, work, and ideas.
North East Together is hosted by Yes We Can and is a collaboration between Yes We Can and Newcastle University Business School. We’re grateful for the support both organisations give to North East Together.
Future North East Together events
- Gearing up for our collaboration journeys, North East Together’s whole network event 24, Thursday 25 May, 13:00–16:30, The Frederick Douglass Centre, Newcastle University
- NET Connect, Tuesday 12 September 2023, 16:00–17:15, online
