RESULTS
Investment In Excellence continues to be very popular among the officers and is widely considered some of the best training ever offered.

• Every officer hired since 1987 has completed Investment In Excellence, totalling 2,100 of the
2,800 on the force.

• Many officers’ spouses have joined them in the training.

• Metro Dade is rated the #2 police department in America.

The Pacific Institute’s training not only revolutionised the officers’ professional perspective, but also their personal one.

Investment In Excellence is credited with stress reduction and improved familial relationships.

Addressing these personal concerns proves especially worthwhile in policework, which has the highest divorce rate and the second highest suicide rate in the nation.

Building on its success with Investment In Excellence, Metro Dade has now trained facilitators to teach the Pacific Institute’s Ethics and Organisational Success program.

Metro Dade will be the first police department in the nation to implement the program. Metro Dade’s leaders consider this advance very important when considering that in all their hours of training, dealing with a vast array of human conflicts, officers receive only four hours of ethics training.

“The Programs give pupils, teachers, parents and the community a commitment to a ”can-do” culture that brooks no denial.

By fostering the growing certainty of a core group, the confidence spreads to those around them, building a community that dares to believe it can achieve.”

Tim Brighouse

“By putting The Pacific Institute’s material into the local education authority and the wider council we can affect the whole city.

As more and more people get involved, the effects will be compounded. Our strategy is not to just deliver the programs to schools, but to the wider school community: teachers, pupils, and parents.

Beyond that we will take the material to whole neighbourhoods: social agencies, housing , support and care associations and the police.

In this way we can affect whole areas of the city. But it is not just the programs, it is what follows on from them. That is when people see the force of this material, the power of it to generate real change.”

Mick Waters

“Investment In Excellence offers our community and the variety of social groups and organisations therein a tool kit which allows them to make lasting changes and use more of their potential.

Such sustainable changes in attitudes, beliefs, expectations and aspirations are an essential element in local regeneration.”

Damien Yates, Chief Executive

“So far two STEPS programs have been run for spouses and the first Breakthrough course for youngsters will take place in the school holidays.

Can you picture the power of a family where parents and teenagers have been through Investment In Excellence, STEPS or Breakthrough and where home and work goals are fully aligned.”

Richard Parkes, Managing Director

“These courses are about giving local people back their self confidence and self esteem, and they are delivering some amazing results. We have tracked the progress of long term unemployed program participants, and the results have been spectacular.

One hundred percent gained credit under the Open College Network Accreditation Scheme, and have subsequently moved on to employment (35%), further education (34%), self-employment (8%) or an active job search.”

Jeanette Edwards

“To date a total of 1,158 young people have been through our Breakthrough program and 45% have progressed into mainstream training program. This is a particularly impressive result in light of the difficult group the program is focussed on.”

Roz May

“It is a blessing to be a catalyst in the lives of other people and seeing them develop and
change their lives. Once they get hold of this material they just take off. These concepts are
the basis of my life today.”

Frances O’Kane on receiving an MBE for her efforts on behalf of disadvantaged people in Northern Ireland

• “The TPI initiative is considered crucial to improving corporate culture”.

• “Longer term corporate goals such as ethics, accountability, responsibility and morality have seen favourable shifts in attitudes and behaviour.”

• “Whilst constables still reported many positive improvements, sergeants, inspectors and higher ranks perceived even more improvements.”

• “Sworn staff and public servants had similar findings. This universality of findings across both sectors of employment augers well for exchange of best practices and ideas and should strengthen team work.”

• “Success stories are borne out quantitatively with a large majority reporting that the courses have helped their team synergy, shown them how to bring out the best in others, solve problems more effectively, achieve goals and act confidently.”

• “Corporate belonging has also strengthened with many people feeling they are part of a team, are valued, and in turn feel more pride in, and commitment to, The NSW Police Service.”

• “Attending TPI courses and seeing the impact it has had on people has made staff feel the NSW Police Service values and cares about them.”

• “The courses are effective both personally and corporately. Staff perceive that improvements in the way they feel about themselves have translated into more effective work practice.”

“Ave Maria House women’s refuge provides crisis accommodation for women with children in their care who are escaping domestic violence and/or who are in crisis.

Eleven women, including myself attended the Investment In Excellence program over the week. It was a wonderful time together where it was safe to share, to laugh and to learn.

I have always considered it a privilege to work with these women as their courage and ability to cope in crisis situations is inspiring.

It continues to be a rewarding experience as since the completion of the program I have had continual positive feedback from those who attended as to how the new concepts and skills they have learnt have been put into practise.

Topics such as The Success Model, Comfort Zones and The Power of Self Esteem have continued weeks after the program to stimulate interesting discussion. The women too have kept me up to date with their progress as they work through the manuals and listen to the audio tapes as follow up from their week together.

For me personally, the program has also been invaluable.

It has provided an opportunity for me to re-examine my personal and professional goals and to reflect on my attitudes, beliefs and behaviour. I found the program refreshing with material presented continuing to motivate me to make positive changes in my own life.”

Kathryn Gabrielson

“One of the important features of the police run Investment In Excellence courses has been the involvement of participants from other organisations.

Not only are lines of communication improving internally, but strong links are being forged externally with Victoria’s Country Fire Authority and Ambulance Service Victoria. The strong contributions by participants from other corporations and businesses assist the police members to see alternative points of view and it is proving to be a win-win approach as the Victoria Police endeavours to become more customer focussed.”

“On a personal note I can say that the Investment In Excellence material has changed the way I live my life and I only wish I had been exposed to these principles twenty years ago.”

Michael Friend, Former Chief Inspector

“Our job is to build capacity in communities that have been hit by the decline in the coal industry, and STEPS makes the job so much easier.

We rely on the communities themselves to take projects forward once we have helped set them up, and once they have been through STEPS they take over and make it happen themselves. They have a clearer vision of what it is they want, and they take a more direct route to making it happen.

It focuses people on the project they are working on, but it has also given them a better perspective of the bigger picture in the community. The participants thoroughly enjoy it, and find it tremendously rewarding.”

Tim Curtain, CEO

“STEPS is a brilliant product. We have been using it for the past five years with the long-term
unemployed. We have put close to 5,000 people through the program, and it has made a
positive contribution to their employability skills. It has been highly successful at turning
people around, convincing them they have something to offer and getting them fired up to go
out and find jobs.”

Brian Reeves, Program Operations Manager

In their own words:

“I am so excited at the prospect of what can be achieved through the Steps To Excellence
program”.

Myna McCullough, Committee Member, The Forum For Community Work Education

“I gained confidence and a more positive approach to people, places and things. In general I
feel much better about myself.”

Single parent, West Belfast

“The program has helped me to keep myself calm, and to push myself to do the things I’ve
always wanted to do.”

Participant, Womens Group, North Belfast

“I gained self-awareness, self-esteem and a positive attitude to life.”

Young man, Shankill

“I learned to treat myself with the respect I deserve, and to respect others despite our
differences. I believe in myself and the future.”

Single mother, West Belfast

“What better advocate is there than someone who can show these women that I have overcome the barriers of my past and am on the path to fulfilling my dreams.

I want to show women that the power to achieve their dreams for a better life rests inside of each of them as well.”

Soledad Strubhar, STEPS Graduate, Mother of 2

“I started that facilitation in 1992. Five months later we took it to the next 300 people and from there to the next 3,000.

We did a homespun version in shacks with no lights, no water – we invented a way of delivering this learning. By January 1993 a strange thing had happened – it was the first month in the history of that township that not one single person had been killed.

We thought we had got lucky. But February, March and April passed, and for the next 13 months, nobody was killed.”

Political violence peaked in South Africa in 1993, the year before our first ever general election.

All other townships experienced an escalation of violence. The only one that broke the trend was Alexandra, where it didn’t just drop, it stabilised at zero.

Six years later, the community still talks about that peace initiative.

The local policemen and security services say that the level of criminal activity has not reached the same levels as before.”

Brian Wegerle, Managing Director, The Pacific Institute South Africa

Brian is now taking the curriculum into other communities. Each year over 30,000 people are touched by the work of The Pacific Institute in South Africa alone.

“Since coming to prison I have had a very low self esteem but on participating in this course it has raised it no end.

My goals have usually been clouded with mis-information that I have fed myself.

STEPS is easy to understand, easy to implement and gives hope back to those that just drifted through life.

I am sixty three years old and came to prison some five and a half years ago for the first time. If only I had heard of this twenty five years ago. Thank you Pacific Institute.”

Participant

“The concept of not just telling us what to do, but how to do it in easy-to-understand language
is the key.

Also the participation of prisoner-facilitators and a prison officer-facilitator has meant that a degree of empathy and rapport with the prisoner-students is achieved which seems to enhance the credibility and transfer of information.

After completion of the course everyone gained something positive in a variety of ways, the most immediate of which seemed to be the ability to cope with the prison experience, and the improved focus on preparing for life after prison. Learning to take control of your own destiny and responsibility for your own actions are the two things, which if most of us had in the first place, many of us may not have come to prison, and having learnt them a lot won’t come back.”

Participant