Our Board has up to nine Trustees. Members are chosen for their skills, experience and commitment to our work, and can come from any country. They have to retire from the Board after completing two terms. This is to ensure that the charity responds to changing circumstances and benefits from a flow of new ideas.
Here, three of our founding Trustees reflect on their time on the Board and what being involved in our work has meant to them.
Prof Mette Ystgaard from Norway was one of the four academic experts who advised on the development of the original Zippy’s Friends. She went on to work with Prof Brian Mishara on two evaluation studies of the programme, and became one of our founding Trustees. More recently she has been involved in researching the implementation and impact of Zippys venner in Norway.
I have been on a long journey with Zippy.
I first became involved back in 1996, when a colleague in Denmark called and told me about the idea of developing an international programme to help young children develop coping skills. We had done some work together on suicide prevention, particularly for adolescents, and she thought I would be interested.
The first thing that came to my mind was that this was a place where I could work in a different way, a more practical way. I had been working with theory and research for a long time, and this was an opportunity to do something more practical, to use my knowledge and experience in a way that was very meaningful. Before moving into research, I had been a school psychologist for many years, and that experience would also be helpful.
In those early days, it didn’t cross my mind that the programme would spread as it has and help so many children – not at all! I had no big vision like that. I just thought that it would be interesting and fun to contribute to a programme that might eventually help some children. Zippy’s Friends was originally called Reaching Young Europe. Even that seemed a very big title, and I never dreamed that it would eventually spread beyond Europe as well.
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Zippy’s Friends Training Workshop, Oslo, Norway, |
Once the programme was developed, I worked with Brian Mishara to evaluate its implementation and impact in Denmark and Lithuania. That was a challenging job, with a lot of evidence to assess, but it soon became clear to us that Zippy’s Friends was working. The teachers found it easy to use and there was a clear benefit for children. I suppose that was when I first realised that this could become something bigger.
My role changed when I became a Trustee of Partnership for Children. It was very meaningful to have the opportunity to contribute to an organisation dedicated to improving children’s wellbeing, and I felt very happy working with the other people in the team. It was the next stage of the journey.
A few years later, the time came to retire from the Board, and although I felt sad because I really enjoyed working with the people, I was ready for my contribution to change again, concentrating once more on the research side and inspiring people here in Norway to disseminate the programme.
Earlier today here in Oslo we had a conference of teachers, school nurses and psychologists who are working with Zippys venner. Every time I am in a gathering like this, I am a bit amazed. People are so enthusiastic, talking about the importance of the programme and its effects. I always knew that the programme was quite straightforward and would be easy for teachers to use, and that the children’s activities were fun, but I honestly didn’t expect teachers to be so enthusiastic about it. Maybe they like it because it is quite structured. Certainly here in Norway it fits very well into the way schools are working, and goes well with the school plans and curriculum.
It’s been a long journey from our first thoughts and ideas on how a programme might be developed to seeing Zippy’s Friends now, spreading like wildfire. A long journey, and for me a very happy one.
Paul was our first Chair of Trustees and had previously been a Trustee of Befrienders International, the agency that developed the first version of what is now Zippy’s Friends. He has also raised funds for us by doing a parachute jump and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
On a bright September day in 2001, six people sat round a table in a Copenhagen office and began the inaugural Board Meeting of Partnership for Children. The six comprised the initial four trustees, supported by Chris and Caroline from the office.
I recall each of us feeling full of enthusiasm for guiding and developing an organisation whose first programme, Zippy’s Friends, was a project that we fervently believed in. We knew that the charity had something very special to promote. At that stage, Zippy’s Friends was being piloted in two countries. How it has grown!
As a trustee and Partnership for Children’s first Chair, I think there were three particular areas of concern that were, perhaps, inevitable and familiar to many small new organisations working in the voluntary sector.
Firstly, we needed to find truly committed people to run the programme in its various locations, while simultaneously doing all we could from a distance to ensure that a local programme was not totally reliant on one person.
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| Paul and his team at Gilman's Point, Mt Kilamanjaro |
The more people that were involved in the management of the programme in any country, the better the chances of its long-term sustainability.
Secondly, as trustees, we all knew that what Zippy’s Friends offered was valuable and could have a marked impact on the development of children from any and every background. Yet we also knew there were other projects that our new charity could explore. Could we handle more projects with a very small team? That question occupied my thoughts for long periods. My heart told me to look more widely (“There’s so much we should be doing”). My head told me that we should grow steadily and not too fast. That view was very significantly influenced by the third concern – finance!
Partnership for Children was very fortunate in being funded through all its early years by GlaxoSmithKline, who were extraordinarily supportive. The charity would not have existed without their funding but, particularly during the latter period of my time as a trustee, the need to widen our financial base became worryingly obvious. Most voluntary organisations struggle to find adequate funds and we were no exception.
Happily, the charity is financially a little more stable now. Importantly, Zippy’s Friends has spread to many countries and is highly respected. For me, there is great pride in having been a part of the creation of an organisation that has developed a programme which so clearly provides skills for children and young people to cope with everyday problems before they become unmanageable.
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| International Workshop, Oxford, 2009 |
Other benefits? Well, I could not have expected such a high level of commitment from my fellow trustees, and I immensely enjoyed - and miss - the frequent contact with the exceptional staff who run the organisation day-by-day. My paid work is in a commercial field where there is rarely time to consider the individual. Being involved with Partnership for Children, despite all the difficulties in trying to secure its future, was a haven of peace and purity!
And the greatest reward? Being invited to attend the workshop in Oxford last year and join more than fifty people now running Zippy’s Friends all over the world. The atmosphere was wonderful. Partnership for Children had truly come of age – and it made me quite emotional.
Jeppe was one of our four founding Trustees. He also chaired the steering group that managed the first pilots of Zippy’s Friends (then called Reaching Young Europe) in Denmark.
I retired as a teacher to become the director of a Danish suicide prevention organization at almost the same time that Partnership for Children was founded and I was invited to become a trustee. Giving up teaching and the responsibility and daily opportunity to help children learn and develop was a difficult decision, and Partnership for Children quickly became a perfect substitute for my work as a teacher.
In Partnership for Children's early years, trusteeship for me involved a lot of the hands-on work often found in young organizations. As a former teacher still missing the daily teaching routine, it was this hands-on work that I was good at and most enjoyed. I enjoyed teaching teachers how to use Zippy’s Friends and helping them to understand the concept of the programme and its ideas on coping skills. It was very rewarding to witness teachers who had been locked for years in somewhat outdated teaching methods suddenly light up and 'get it', to see them realize that this programme is not only for their children, but also an opportunity for them as teachers to grow and learn.
For many teachers in my part of the world there is a natural and necessary connection between learning and emotions. If you don't feel well emotionally, it is difficult to develop academically. Having spent five years teaching primary school children, I know firsthand that if a child is not happy going to school, it is very difficult to teach him or her to read and write. But I also know the effort it takes to find out why a child is not thriving and to help her or him to cope with the situation.
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| Jeppe training teachers in India |
The Partnership for Children journey provided me with an opportunity to share my personal experiences and ideas through a programme that not only shares my views but also has a sound theoretical background and scientific evaluation to prove that it works. Having visited many schools in countries throughout the world, I have seen what I suspected before the journey. Children are raised under very different economic and emotional conditions, but they all need the same basic skills to cope with the challenges and difficulties of growing up.
Apart from translation into the local language, almost no adaptations have been necessary for Zippy’s Friends to become successful in every country in which it has been introduced. This bears witness to its universalism and is testament to the view that all children need the same basic set of coping skills to be able to grow up happy and healthy.
I feel very proud to be part of a team of people who actually managed to turn a good idea into a great programme. I have met and worked with inspiring and wonderful people from all over the world, and for that I am so very grateful.