Zoe Girl
6-24-16, 9:32am
I started a meetup group called Mindfulness with Youth 6 months ago. It has not taken off, part of the reason I started it was to support doing more work in this area that could lead to additional income. I was charging $5 so that I could cover costs and also wanted to earn something. So far I have not covered costs and the next meetup dues are coming up in 2 weeks. I cancelled one due to no RSVP's and of course one person showed up! I had one right after a snow storm and sat there alone for awhile and left (still paid the library rental fee). The 2 supporters are kinda flaky themselves even though they mean well. Just writing this I know I need to cancel the whole meetup. I could push and promote since I think during the school year I may get more interest, but even the $5 stops people. So I came out spending money I did not recover.
Now for the awesome news. I went to a weekend training last weekend with a great organization. The standards for working with them are very high and I qualified! I am just letting that positive reverberate which is nice. I was impressed by the leaders and the training. They focus on brain science more than anyone else I see doing the work and have strong guidelines about it being secular. There is an option to work with them, as they get contracts they need a pool of teachers. This isn't all about money but they pay between $35 and $55 an hour including paying for curriculum development time since they customize for each client. They are working with a big name pharmaceutical company, some first responders, and they use part of the money to work in a teen homeless shelter. I need to email today about what I would like to do with them, my availability will be the biggest issue here based on my regular job. Funny thing is during the training they brought up some issues they had with previous teachers (very respectfully but to be clear about expectations) and they were with the 2 flaky friends I made!
Meanwhile my organization seems interested in having me do some mindfulness training of staff in fall training. I am very interested and am also nervous. The understanding of mindfulness is limited now that it is more popular so I need to address that up front. I am also concerned to basically offer this for free (part of my regular job) and have them understand the years of practice and training I have done on my own time and money. I will talk to my mentor more about that when we meet next. I also need to check in with the organization I want to work with and make sure that it agrees with any contract stipulations they have about outside work.
Now for the awesome news. I went to a weekend training last weekend with a great organization. The standards for working with them are very high and I qualified! I am just letting that positive reverberate which is nice. I was impressed by the leaders and the training. They focus on brain science more than anyone else I see doing the work and have strong guidelines about it being secular. There is an option to work with them, as they get contracts they need a pool of teachers. This isn't all about money but they pay between $35 and $55 an hour including paying for curriculum development time since they customize for each client. They are working with a big name pharmaceutical company, some first responders, and they use part of the money to work in a teen homeless shelter. I need to email today about what I would like to do with them, my availability will be the biggest issue here based on my regular job. Funny thing is during the training they brought up some issues they had with previous teachers (very respectfully but to be clear about expectations) and they were with the 2 flaky friends I made!
Meanwhile my organization seems interested in having me do some mindfulness training of staff in fall training. I am very interested and am also nervous. The understanding of mindfulness is limited now that it is more popular so I need to address that up front. I am also concerned to basically offer this for free (part of my regular job) and have them understand the years of practice and training I have done on my own time and money. I will talk to my mentor more about that when we meet next. I also need to check in with the organization I want to work with and make sure that it agrees with any contract stipulations they have about outside work.