What do our kids want to be known for?
It appears that I have had two full careers (so far) in my life. The first was almost 20 years in marketing and now I have spent 18 years in the non-profit world.
When I owned ONYX Marketing Group in Toronto, Ontario, our brand had five pillars. Below is an image of what those pillars were (with a slight edit for today’s post). Ian and I have been speaking to our older kids (5th and 6th grade) about what they want to be known for. How do they want to be seen by the outside world? What is their “brand”, but obviously not using that word. We started by explaining the ONYX brand and how we wanted to be known for our PASSION, INTEGRITY, HARD WORK, CARING FOR OTHERS and NO EXCUSES approach. We explained that the opposite of those things were BORING, NOT HONEST, LAZY, DON’T CARE and TOO MANY EXCUSES.
First, we asked the kids to make a list of all the words they think people use to describe them after visiting us at Project Canaan. How would the visitors or volunteers explain Project Canaan and the children to their friends and families? Below was the list that they created by raising their hands and each giving a different word.
Then we asked the kids to give five words that they would LIKE people to use when describing them to friends and family. After all, if there are words we want to be known by, we need to be intentional and work towards that. The list they came up with is below.
Each of them then had five votes for their top five words they would want to help define who they are to themselves, the younger ones following in their footsteps and the outside world. We are calling these our Family Values. They actually came up with eight words (there were four words that tied). Then our daughter Chloe had the idea for us to try to make an acronym, which would make it easier to remember. Big idea.
Project Canaan Family Values
Here is what we all decided on…
(Thank you, Lisa Borders, for the creative work on the words themselves.)
This all happened back in June 2023 and we have been rolling it out slowly. We’ve included it in Sunday messages and have been talking about it in groups. Recently we had a film crew at Project Canaan with David Bryant. They asked 40-50 kids “What do Make (mom) and Babe (dad) mean to you? What do Make and Babe do for you? I wasn’t present, but David told me that many of them answered, “They have given me a family”. They heard, they saw and they understand now. That brings so much joy to my heart! As Ian and I are beginning our sabbatical for three months, I have great certainty that our ever growing family is being nurtured, loved and discipled in the areas that we all care about.
Janine
