Good Work gets to work across Norfolk

Good Work is a Norwich and Yarmouth-based mission that supports everyone from a janitor, grass cutter and dinner lady to a seafarer, mayor and chief executive.

 

What do a seafarer, an educational support worker, a food packer, a wheelie bin collector, a dinner lady, a shop worker, a town hall receptionist, a laundry worker, and grass cutter, a hospital worker, a sugar producer, a mayor, a janitor and a chief executive officer all have in common?

 

They all have a chaplain who visits them where they work – on board ship, at their desk, or over lunch in county hall, in their food processing plant in Thetford, on their rounds in the Borough of Great Yarmouth, in their school kitchen, in their shop, at their reception desk or where they are working on a pressing or drying machine, in fact wherever they work.

 

This is the ministry that many work place chaplains perform and one body that co-ordinates a lot of this activity is Good Work (Norfolk & Waveney Industrial Mission).

 

Industrial Mission has been about for a long time but in Norfolk & Waveney it now has the badge of Good Work to try and reflect the breadth of work place activity, the quality of the ministry and the hopes that we have of what people do and how they are supported in doing it.

 

Barry Capon, who chairs the Good Work team, says: “Being there for people in the cut and thrust of their working lives is very important to us. The whole team is really committed to serving people in this way. People are people whether they are working or resting, at home or at the office, shop or factory.

 

“If people are struggling at home they take that struggle into the workplace, and if their job is stressing them out then the family will feel it. We can no longer expect people to compartmentalize their feelings; switch themselves on and off to suit family or employer.

 

“Of course it’s very important for people to have a good work/life balance and that is what everyone should aim for because then it is easier to switch off and enjoy where you are, who you are with and what you are doing. But the start is being there for people: laughing with those who laugh, mourning with those who mourn, listening, learning, supporting and praying the hurt or the happiness.”

 

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