The Mercy Governance Programme has a number of aspects.
At the heart of our mahi there must be a deep commitment to the Catholic mission, grounded in the theology of lay ministry and expressed through authentic synodality. Our actions and decisions should be shaped by Catholic Social Teachings, which call us to uphold human dignity, pursue the common good, and act in solidarity with those on the margins. An ethical approach to our work is essential, not only in how we make decisions, but in how we embody our values in every aspect of our service.
For us as Mercy Whānau, the Mercy charism offers a powerful lens through which we can understand and enact our responsibilities. Grounded in the legacy of the Sisters of Mercy, this mission calls us to respond to the needs of our communities with aroha, whanaungatanga and kaitiakitanga. It should be a driving force behind our decision-making and actions, inspiring us to lead with Mercy and to ensure that our work reflects the values of love, service, and transformation.
The Mercy Governance programme also supports our WMM directors and leaders to have access to development opportunities in leadership and governance.
One of the ways we currently support this is by having WMM coordinate full board membership for each of the WMM ministry boards, ensuring that every director has access to IoD membership. This helps promote best practice governance across all boards. As part of this membership there is a requirement to record your continual professional development (cpd), with the requirement to earn approximately 20 cpd a year, or 60 over a three-year rolling period.
IoD offers a range of courses. Each IoD course is cost to the Director or Ministry Board by special arrangement. Each course has a variety of fee structures that each director or board will need to assess for affordability and relevance. IoD courses are automatically logged on your profile.
WMM also offers webinars and governance offerings, at either no cost or a heavily subsidised cost and the general rule is 1 cpd for each hour you spend engaged with our webinars, or reading relevant resources, books and magazines. Governance and leadership cpd outside of IoD must be self-reported.
To log cpd:
Log in to the IoD website.
Under your profile click on Record cpd
Identify what type of cpd activity you are logging.
Put in the date.
Put in a description of the course, for example WMM Care for the common home webinar.
Put the provider of the activity. If it is one of our Mercy governance offerings you can put WMM, if it is professional reading, you can put self for example.
Put it in the number of points. This is roughly 1 cpd per hour.
Click on record cpd.