Staff Stories: Sarah McBride, Training and Development Manager

You may know a bit about who we are as an organisation. You might know our mission is to create safer places. But what about those behind this work? In this blog series, we'll introduce some of the staff members working behind the scenes. This post features Sarah McBride, our Training & Development Manager, who is responsible for all of our training events.

Can you tell us about your role at Thirtyone:eight?

I work in the Training and Development Team and get to work alongside, and learn from, incredible trainers who equip 10,000+ delegates each year. I love asking creative questions about how we can make safeguarding training better.  

Can you share some of your story so far? What work were you involved in before joining Thirtyone:eight?

For the last 16 years, I’ve been living and working in Asia. Most of that time has been spent supporting government institutions in their care for children and young people. That’s included the training and management of staff, partnership with local organisations to support care leavers and countless other projects and opportunities that I’m so humbled to have experienced.  

There were two recent projects that really had my heart. One was a menstrual hygiene program – teaching young girls without mothers how to self-care during menstruation and what to expect. We couldn’t find anything appropriate for the context, so over the course of three years, a colleague and I wrote it, invested hundreds of hours into it and launched it. 

The project was a spectacularly successful failure – we taught 20 girls who loved it and then failed to get approval from the leaders of the institution/Civil Affairs to ever run it again. Fast forward a bit and a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend heard about our course material telling us she’s been looking for anything to fit Chinese language and culture. This incredible local girl took the project and won government approval to teach the course to over 5,000 girls in rural areas in her province.  

The second was the care leavers project. We knew that care leavers (i.e., those leaving foster/state care) in every country and culture are significantly more likely to be unemployed, experience mental health difficulties, do prison time and commit suicide than their in-families peers.  

We also knew that in China, the unadopted kids who turned 18 in the children’s welfare institution were most often put into the adults’ welfare institution and don’t have the chance to enter mainstream society. We approached our government supervisors, who bravely took the risk of letting us work with these ‘big kids’, offer them supported housing, finance courses, help with interviews, and teach them many of the things they needed to know to survive outside of state care.  

Together, the 13 young people entrusted to us became a community. Leaving them was heart-breaking. On our final meal with them, one of them shared: “I was tricked. I was told if I joined your project, I’d get a job. But I also got a family.” I love how, when we step out and do the practical and tangible things, God takes that offering and increases it, changing people’s hearts and lives in ways that aren’t so tangible but still significant. 

What inspired you to join Thirtyone:eight?

Awkwardly, I didn’t apply for this role to begin with at all! After so long overseas, I wondered what skills I had that would transfer to the UK, but that would still allow me to be involved a meaningful role.   

To get the work visa I needed overseas, I’d done my Masters in Social Welfare Law and as part of that had conducted research and been published, so I was looking into the research side of charities.  As I read the job description, I could see how much of this role crossed over with the previous experiences we’d had…albeit in a very different environment.  

Why are you interested in safeguarding training, and can you share some of your plans to develop this? 

My little family loves cheesy mantras. If you hang around with us for any length of time, you’ll definitely hear ‘twinning is winning’, ‘work hard, play harder’ and ‘readers are leaders’. I love to read, I love to ask questions and I love to learn.  

Some of my work-related reading, questioning and learning can be weighty. Hearing the experiences of victims and survivors and the life-long impact abuse has had on their lives reminds us that this work, and the work of everyone involved in safeguarding, is unspeakably important.  

Every day I can see ways in which training plays a key role in preventing abuse. Equipping delegates with the knowledge and the confidence to speak up and refer can mean others avoid the life-impacting harm other victims and survivors experience.  

I recently read a great story from WWII in Bulgaria who were told to send the Jews living there to a concentration camp. Ultimately, the Jews were loading onto trains and the town’s leaders stood on the tracks declaring; ‘You can take them, but you’ll have to kill us first.’ That incredible act is remembered as the Ceremony of the Ungiven. Safeguarding training helps those working with children and adults at risk of harm to put in place practices that prevent abuse. 

For those of us who work in training, we won’t see much of the impact of our work this side of eternity, because we contribute to the ‘harm that never materialised’. In a less measurable way, our training delegates are following the amazing legacy of that Bulgarian town – adding to the list of individuals not willingly given over to harmful situations. Training also gives other people the opportunity to read, ask questions and learn and that always-growing awareness is a game-changer.  

What do you like most about your job?  

I love that it’s my job to be curious and quiet and thoughtful, but that’s it’s also my job to be with people and connect and listen. It’s a wonderful mix!

What does a typical workday look like for you?

I’m not sure I’ve found a typical one yet! It’s so varied! I work from home but still feel really connected with the wider Thirtyone:eight team and it’s very rare that a day goes past without collaboration or meetings. The Training Team are constantly re-writing webinars or creating new content, listening to the feedback from delegates and looking strategically at how we can better equip delegates in the future.

Are you reading anything interesting right now? What’s your takeaway from it?  

I’ve got 3 pages left to read in Amy C. Edmondson’s ‘The Fearless Organisation’, which is all about psychological safety in the workplace.  

One key takeaway from the book is that she encourages people to influence others by ‘the 3 C’s: curiosity, compassion, and commitment. It really struck me. Twenty years ago, I did team leader training and learnt about the importance of character, competency and chemistry. Reading Edmondson highlighted a healthy shift towards more learning-led and people-focused organisations.  

Plus, the whole book underscores what those of us in safeguarding already know – you can’t build much of value in an environment where we experience fear. Building safe places has so many important implications for all involved.  

What’s on your bucket list? 

Seeing the Northern Lights is at the top! 

Written by Adam Graver and Sarah McBride. 

Find out more about our staff and trustees: Our people | Thirtyone:eight (thirtyoneeight.org)