Before the year ends, the Filipino Catholic Community in Gouda (FCC-Gouda) and the Filipino Catholic Community in Dordrecht (FCC-Dordrecht) joined forces and have successfully completed the first of many more upcoming leadership and organizational trainings to help the community move forward. Members of the Board, leaders or officers and future leaders as well as active members from both communities joined together on November 24, 2018 at the O.L.V. Hemelvaartkerk in Gouda for the 5-hour training on transformational leadership.

Led and facilitated by Myra Zymelka-Colis, Content & Concept Developer at E3 Data Intelligence Services (e3dis) and the Founding Chairperson of MABIKAs Foundation-The Netherlands, the interactive training focused more on understanding the WHYs, WHATs and HOWs of the organization and clarifying what the FCC communities are here for (vision, mission and goals).

What further added value to the training is the presence and support of Father Marcel Abouchi, of whom FCC will always be grateful for for his commitment and dedication in helping us meet the needs of the church and community members.

Seven (7) of the participants are from FCC-Dordrecht and eleven (11) are from FCC-Gouda. Apparently, the 7/11 attendees find the training workshop valuable and were all happy to end the day with positive and constructive feedback such as follows:

A useful day with lots of information on how to improve, maintain, give info, grow and connect with people.”
“The content of the workshop meets the expectations and is spelled out. Presentation is very well, clear and engaging. The atmosphere was nice, informal yet adequate for learning.”
“I’ve learned a lot from this training. It has given me a direction on where we are going as an organization. The training also helped me to realize what our vision, mission and goals are for the community as well as the activities that we need to focus onto to achieve our goals.”
“The workshop was really worth attending. I’ve learned a number of things that I’m quite positive will greatly help improve how we as Board Members run our organization/ foundation. I’ve always been looking for ways to “professionalize” our organization and bring it to a higher level somehow, and our trainer & facilitator has given us insights and suggestions on how to achieve that.”
Group discussion on spiritual maturity
Group discussion on time management
Group discussion on human resources
Group discussion on fundraising
“The speaker/facilitator is knowledgeable of the topic. The informal atmosphere enables us to openly speak our minds.”
“The training is very informative. It opened my eyes to new ideas and also value what we are already doing as a group in the church. We learned a lot of ways to improve; there’s more room for improvement.”
The FCC-Gouda Team
The FCC-Dordrecht Team

“Thank you, Myra, for the educational and spiritual leadership training. It has enlarged my mission as a Christian and as a member of FCC. It was worth listening to every word.”