Examples of Grants Recently Approved
The Stick Kit course and platform development
The Stick Kit is an online relationship education platform that has been developed to provide a new and innovative means of delivering relationship education resources to the broader Australian community. While relationship crisis counselling services are well resourced, there are limited relationship education services available to the Australian community. As such, The Stick Kit aims to provide readily accessible online access to relationship education services available to married couples.
PMRC has supported the funding of this this secular relationship education program, platform delivery, course development and marketing planning and initial launch.
Real Talk International
Funding to Real Talk International to support their work in the area of relationship education and life choices.
“Real Talk provides talks on sex and relationships to high school students. The grant we received from the PMRC Foundation has greatly helped Real Talk to present at events and travel to communities that would otherwise have difficulties covering the travel expenses incurred by Real Talk. These include regional trips to the northern territory as well a variety of youth events.” – Paul Ninnes, Director
SmartLoving Engage Course Production
Funding for video filming and production costs associated with a second edition of the SmartLoving Engaged program.
The new edition has been refined from the feedback of experienced mentor couples across the world and their experiences with literally thousands of engaged couples.
Print materials, including a 140 page Participant Pack and 256 page Mentors Manual have been revised and the DVDs, which include the two hours of video based teaching content, were released in April 2015.
This course is the only Australian produced online Catholic Marriage Education program that is also seeing broad international uptake. The course materials are currently being translated into Mandarin, Malaysian and Spanish and it is envisaged that translation into other languages will soon follow.
The PMRC Relationship Education Foundation was instrumental in the development of this course revision..
Development of the SmartLoving.org website
The SmartLoving.org website has been designed to provide the community with a go-to place for marriage and relationship information. Presented in the context of the Catholic faith but relevant to all, the website contains a rich and growing suite of free online resources, including:
- blog articles on relationships,
- details of and registration for marriage preparation courses, and
- details of and registration for marriage enrichment events
The website is linked to a range of social media applications, which provides a platform for discussion with the community on relationship issues and generates awareness of SmartLoving and its associated activities. A significant portion of the funding for the development of this we-presence was funded by the PMRC Relationship Education Foundation.
Funding for the Renaissance of Marriage Conference, October 2010.
The Renaissance of Marriage Conference was held in Sydney from October 1-3, 2010. The conference provided an opportunity for those involved in marriage education to further their professional development, with several internationally recognised keynote speakers presenting. Conference registrations were open to all individuals and couples who have a personal interest in marriage formation. Approximately 150 delegates from across Australia attended the conference; as well as representatives from related organisations in the US, UK and NZ.
Topics addressed throughout the conference included:
- Innovations in Marriage Formation
- Knot Yet: Why couples are delaying marriage
- Trends in marriage education throughout the world
A seed grant to fund this conference was provided by the PMRC Relationship Education Foundation and was critical to underwriting significant costs for the conference including venue hire, speaker fees and travel costs.
Funding was also provided to ROM16, ROM18, ROM19 which featured international and national speakers and a steady increase in delegate numbers.
Funding an Online Adaptation of the SmartLoving Marriage Seminar
The Marriage Resource Centre is currently considering the development a new marriage enrichment resource that would be the online equivalent of the SmartLoving Marriage Seminar. This resource will be entirely digitally delivered and will help spouses connect with each other and learn practical strategies to build happy and resilient marriages. Like all SmatLoving resources, it will be designed using innovative frameworks and liberating insights from contemporary psychology and Catholic theology. It will utilise video-delivered content removing the need for trained presenters and allow it to be entirely digitally delivered; allowing this program to be rapidly rolled out in a very low cost manner.
There is a significant development cost for this program given both the technology development required, and the amount of filming required to build the video-delivered content. We hope to be able to largely fund this resource through the efforts of the Foundation.