Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/empowered-teams-going-beyond-commitment-how-one-small-group-mobilized-their-strengths/5012093/
"Never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."- Margaret Mead
2016 candy bars. That's what it took to get our Training Cluster members from Washington, DC, to Seattle, Washington, for the 1997 NAEYC Professional Development Conference. Our training director, Jacky Howell, had attended the conference the year before last and had returned to us full of ideas, energy, and contagious enthusiasm. Under her initiative, our organization, the Montgomery Child Care Association Training Institute, would be one of 25 groups focused in the 1997 conference's Spotlight Forum.
This article is about how the conference provided an opportunity for us to realize that our Training Institute was more than an effective team - we had gone beyond commitment to become an empowered team. "We've all got to go to this conference," Jacky had told us resolutely. "People want to hear our story."
It was a pretty simple story. In 1985, Montgomery Child Care Association (MCCA) had a problem. We had eight child care centers and a lack of quality training providers for our staff. When education director Pat Scully couldn't find training outside the organization, she turned inside. She began organizing a ...