Bridges

This is going to be difficult to explain.

So I'm not with Facile anymore. Or at least, I was with Facile for its full run, but they've changed their name to Bridges to Belonging, and I didn't cross that Bridge from Facile to Belonging.

It's a good choice in name change. "Facile" is the French word for easy. I think they used it because "Facile" sounds like "facilitation" and facilitation should "make things easy". Unfortunately, facilitation is not really intended to make things easy, and actually, it should present challenges.

In England, the term "Facile" might mean, "to make so simple it is ridiculous". Considering the population that I serve, and the stigmatization they often, it might be seen that a change in vocabulary was overdue.

I first came on when there was a need for new workers because of a sudden influx in funding from something called the Independent Facilitation Demonstration Project (IFDP). This was a project funded by the government to assess how valuable independent facilitation was for the populations we serve. Before this project was put into place, Facile operated on a "fee for service" basis, people paying out of pocket for a service they knew they agreed with.

With the introduction of the new fiscal year, there were some severe funding cuts to people in the IFDP, and five of my six people were effected.

So guess what I'm doing this summer?

That's right! The Extend-a-Family Summer Program! Before me and my Facile supervisor spoke on ending my partnership with the organization, I had already within a week been offered and declined the Summer Program position. I was like "Love you guys, but I'm way too old and busy and successful to do this job"

A week later and I'm like "Hey... any chance there's any room in that old Summer Program?"

I picked up some independent support contracts to tide me over until the summer program begins, and I still have my Extend-a-Family people. Even if I don't have much planned until after, this Summer I will be even busier than last year.