SmartLoving BreakThrough Companion Project
In the past, Participants generally worked their way through the SL BreakThrough course alone in the online platform. For many, this was a powerful and helpful experience, but for a significant cohort was under-utilised. These Participants really needed a more personal accompaniment, one that was a flesh and blood accompaniment.
BreakThrough Companions accompany the Participant in the experience meeting up after each part to pray with, encourage, and support the Participant in their transformative journey.
The Companion program will train and equip those who provide pastoral care to spouses in marital distress, including priests, deacons, religious, parish ministers, school counsellors, and couples.[/mrc_tab]
Stage 2 now needs resourcing and includes:
- Recruitment and training of Companions
- Assessment and refinement of the Companion track
Future stages will focus on the translation of all materials into Spanish and other languages, expansion into new communities, collaboration with allied professions such as counsellors.
Help us to rollout Stage 2
We’ve already funded the core Companion track development but not the critical elements of the rollout. Your donation will help us to make this happen faster and to reach wider
Stage 2 now needs resourcing and includes:
Recruitment and training of Companions
Assessment and refinement of the Companion track
Future stages will focus on the translation of all materials into Spanish and other languages, expansion into new communities, collaboration with allied professions such as counsellors.
Help us to rollout Stage 2
We’ve already funded the core Companion track development but not the critical elements of the rollout. Your donation will help us to make this happen faster and to reach wider.
Newlywed Resource Upgrade
The Newlywed years are well known to be the highest risk years for marriage breakdown. SmartLoving has recently published a simple email program to support couples through these years with a monthly thought piece for the first two years. As helpful as it is, the content needs more creative presentation utilising digital technologies to more effectively support couples in this stage. This requires the adaptation of content to conform with contemporary digital communication standards and the design and building of an appropriate digital platform.
Your support will enable us to invest in upgrading the content and future proofing the SL content delivery to ensure that it enjoys wide uptake of future generations.
The Renaissance Series 2026
PMRC (Australia) hosts a number of significant professional gatherings under the project name of The Renaissance Series. Events include Conferences for Marriage Educators, Professional Symposiums, Round Table Discussions, and facilitated working groups. Bringing together experts both professional and volunteer from allied fields, the Renaissance Series features Australian and international speakers on pertinent topics seeking innovative solutions to complex issues impacting marriage and family life.
The next event is planned for 2026. Registration fees will be kept to a minimum, intended to cover the direct and variable costs of the conference only. PMRC (Australia) seeks funding from the PMRC Foundation to contribute to the administrative costs associated with hosting this event in order to make it accessible to as many attendees as possible.
RealTalk Outreach to Youth
The PMRC Foundation actively supports organisations, such as Real Talk International, who provide relationship and proximate marriage education within a Christian ethos to students in high schools. Good marriage and relationship skills are learnt from an early age, starting in the home, where children learn who they are and how the human person is called to give and receive love. The term proximate marriage education refers to the period in time when young people are dating and starting to make choices about life-long partners.
It is important that students are receiving information about healthy relationships and the value of their own self during this formative period in their life, in order to establish respectful and lasting relationships and marriages in future years. The PMRC Foundation seeks to continue funding support to broaden the reach of existing programs of Real Talk and to encourage new initiatives in this area.
Previous Grant Projects (examples)
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.