✉️Newsletter: Human connection & Erasmus grant

Dear colleagues and friends, 

I want to thank you for all the emails you sent me in response to my last new year message.

It is humbling to read your words of appreciation, admiration and encouragement ❤️. 

What warms my heart most of all is that many of you feel our story encourages you. And even though times are hard for you, you continue to follow our work on social media and in our newsletter because it gives you courage that things will work out for you. I want to sincerely thank you for giving me and my MIP team this feedback.

I think that at the end of the day, this year will be mainly about human connection. We will need to stick together, talk through hardships together, hold each other’s hands. I feel that we have so many friends out there who are thinking of us. Thank you for that. And I hope you feel the same care and love from us. 

And wow! I received close to 50 emails from people who …HAVE A DREAM 😍. 

And they would like my help with making their dream project come true, imagine that.
I have to tell you, I cried reading some of your emails. I will not share details, as they were very private emails and many of them contained AMAZING Montessori ideas for projects! But I will give you just a broad sense, so you understand why I am so in awe…

I heard from mothers who are feeling lonely, weak and tired, who cannot focus on their dream project because their child keeps them up at night. I heard from women who want to open family centers, who want to educate parents, but they do not know how to get funding.  

I heard from brave people who want to open schools and training centers in far far corners of the world. I heard from colleagues who have years and years of experience and they have done so much, some of them are close friends, and yet they feel that mentoring in my group could be of help to them. Just simply wow… And thank you. 

So, it seems that I will start two groups. I cannot handle more at the same time, but two I will do. I made a decision. And then, right after I made the decision, I happened to go to a meeting with my dear grant colleague Plamena. And she says: “Mirko, Erasmus calls for spring 2023 are announced!” 

I was up all night, thinking about all your projects and what are the various things we at MIP can do, to help you, including help with marketing and so on. And then: “Ding!” A new idea popped up in my head! 

(Now, a tiny funny side note: In MIP, when I say: “I have a new idea!”, my colleagues start sweating and some of them faint 😅.)

But seriously, Do you see what I see? Things are happening, we just need to think about them. All night I was thinking about how to help these amazing projects with funding.

Here is what I came up with 😀. We will try and apply for an Erasmus grant for both of my mentoring groups!!! Is that not an amazing idea/opportunity????

Once the mentoring work is done, your dream projects are outlined, captured, and thought through and we have your plans done, we will try and apply for some funding together. Why not try, right?

There is no guarantee that this will work, ok!

But we are rather good at Erasmus writing. We have 2 successful applications approved and, if the funding would go through, we could collaborate for a year or two. So, let’s try. We know how.

Erasmus covers international visits, educational activities, job shadowing (oh my goodness, will I have too many job shadows 🙂?) and more. Any bit will help.

When pieces of a puzzle start to come together and they are starting to give the hidden picture, I know I am on the right track. And I thank God for showing me the way.

(And I was so afraid to offer you my help for so many years…. 😍)

There is one more piece of new information that we need to share with you. 

We are changing our discount policy. We used to offer a 10% discount to those of you who are returning clients. We are going to continue to allow you to get a better price for our Certificate Courses, but we will do it via early bird price. We really need you people to register on time :), and we know this will help you do that. So, make sure to check those EARLY BIRD DEADLINES for all of the Orientations coming up (0-3, 3-6, 6-12 and 12-18) and for the AMI Administrators Course as well. You can save 50 Eur if you register now! And later, there is no more saving. 

With wishes for a good start of the week!

And with much love, encouraged by your dreams, 

Yours,

Mirka
On behalf of the whole MIP team