Getting Ahead Workshop

GA class 004

The Getting Ahead Workshop is free and open to everyone in the community. Getting Ahead is required for individuals leasing one of your homes in Garden Square, but it can be beneficial to anyone.

What’s Getting Ahead all about?

Everybody has a story, but are you just someone who is in the story, or are you shaping your story? That’s what Getting Ahead is about.

Getting Ahead is not about getting information, it is about changing your thinking. Poverty has a way of focusing our thinking on the present—just getting by from day to day. Faith starts when we think about the future—how we can get ahead, not just get by.

Getting Ahead provides a way to investigate the impact that poverty has had on you, your family, and your communities. It provides a safe, agenda-free learning environment where adults can reflect on their lives, examine where they are at, assess their own strengths and resources, investigate new possibilities, make plans for their own future stories, offer ideas for building a prosperous community, and choose a team to help them fulfill their goals and dreams.

Getting Ahead puts you on the board of a decision-making groups and helps you feel comfortable in the role of a decision-maker. You are a problem solver, and your voice is needed at the table, especially when plans are being made that impact you and your communities.

What happens at Getting Ahead?

Don’t picture a teacher standing up lecturing while a group of students listens and takes notes. Instead, picture 12 people gathered around a kitchen table. One is a Guide; the others are Investigators. The guide helps the process along, but the Investigators do the work of exploring, examining, and processing information. The Guide’s job is not to make suggestions, offer solutions, or argue for change. Instead, the Guide encourages and supports the Investigators as they develop tools to deal critically and creatively with reality and solve community problems.

What will I get out of it?

As an investigator, you will explore and analyze themes in your life, assess your resources, build your future story, make your own choices, enjoy the power that comes from solving problems and controlling your own life. You’ll discover the hidden rules of class that empower you to think and act differently. You’ll make concrete plans for economic stability and begin to build wealth.

What does Getting Ahead cost?

Nothing; in fact, Investigators in a Getting Ahead Workshop are paid, because you are providing valuable information and solving problems and thereby improving our whole community.

What else is provided?

Food or snacks, and supplies are provided. Transportation can also be provided if needed.

When, where, and how long is Getting Ahead?

Getting Ahead is made up of 16 weekly sessions of 2 and 1/2 hours. Transformation Montgomery currently offers Getting Ahead workshops at Frazer United Methodist Church on Atlanta Highway (future sessions will be held at the Transformation Center). For dates of the next session, contact Ellen Ward at eward@frazerumc.org.