Speaker: Pam Wilson, General Manager, Vision College
Pam Wilson: Kia ora koutou, My name is Pam Wilson, and I'm the General Manager here at Vision College. Vision College is our tertiary training provider, and we have campuses in three locations across the country. Christchurch, Papakura and Hamilton.
How does Vision College show love to others?
Pam Wilson: Vision College is an awesome ministry where we get to work with heaps of different students and staff. The way that we show love to others around us is in so, so many ways. There's a number of ways that our students need help. So we start from picking them up, sometimes in the mornings, breakfast, pastoral care conversations, all those sorts of things that help create a safe learning environment for our students that they want to be in and our staff as well. So our staff team have a really great environment that they work together in and support and champion the best in one another.
How do you personally show love to others at work?
Pam Wilson: I'm in a really privileged position. I feel in my role as I personally get to show love to lots of people throughout my day, students and staff taking time to see them, to hear them, to pray with them, to encourage them to help that smile as they go about their day. It's an awesome opportunity to be able to provide that for people.
Where have you seen transformation taking place?
Pam Wilson: The mission statement here at Vision College is "Changing Lives through Learning", and there's heaps of opportunities to do that. We have students that come to us who have never achieved a credit through the schooling system, and we celebrate that with them. We get to celebrate those first credits and when they get to pass their qualification, it's the first thing that they've ever achieved in terms of a qualification, and it's wonderful to be a part of that. And a lot of these stories are that they are the first people in their whaanau to receive a qualification for as far back as they remember. We get the opportunity to really encourage their parents as well. So often we have phone calls and messages with our parents and our tutors, and the parents will say, Oh, what have they done now when they answer the phone, because that's what they're used to from school. But we get to say, Hey, they've had a really good day, this is what they did today. It was awesome and we get to celebrate with them and so we get parents who say to us, "Thank you, thank you for the impact that you're having on my child's life, we're seeing a difference at home now", not just in their schooling but in their home environment as well. So we have numerous stories of students of whanau, and I really believe we are impacting future generations here at Vision College.
When have you smiled, knowing God is at work?
Pam Wilson: I've seen so many things in the past year at Vision College that make me so thankful to our mighty God. We have seen some really amazing staff appointments. Absolute perfect God-timing that these new staff are coming to us and really impacting the lives of future generations. We've seen great student enrollments in so many of our programmes and so thank you, Jesus.
What motivates you to love others?
Pam Wilson: What motivates me to love others? The fact that I get to be a part of the day, I love that I get to walk around our corridors, walk around this incredible property that's under development at the moment and just really encourage and support others around here. It's amazing the number of people that we have say to us, "ah, there's just something really different about this place" and it's just wonderful to hear that we know that the Holy Spirit is moving and I am so thankful that I get to have the opportunity to be a part of this.
