John Powell Institute:
Care. Resiliency. Retention.

What is JPI?

Cross-cultural workers need comprehensive care throughout their service. Despite the recognition of this need, the high attrition rates among Western sending organizations, agencies, and churches show that there is still work to be done in identifying and improving care for these workers. MTI's strengths in pre-field training, debriefing, and collaboration with sending and caregiving agencies uniquely position us to address this reality.

Dr. John Powell, an active MTI board member, has played a key role in developing practices to ensure the health and well-being of cross-cultural workers. In honor of his contributions, the John Powell Institute (JPI) has been established. JPI is a learning community that serves as a think tank focused on supporting the resilience and retention of cross-cultural workers.

MTI has initiated this collaborative effort to address the current and evolving needs of cross-cultural workers and those who support them. Our vision is for comprehensive and readily available care throughout a worker's entire service. By identifying needs, integrating healthy routines, and providing effective care at every stage, we aim to promote increased well-being for cross-cultural workers.

If you are interested in joining the John Powell Institute team, please check here for any available jobs postings!

How does it work?

At JPI, we will be following a process to gather data related to current realities and experiences, as well as current research. This will help us refine our questions to discover new and reliable ways to address holistic care of the cross-cultural worker. This research will occur in four cycles throughout the calendar year, each lasting seven days.

In each cycle, we will spend:

  • Three days gathering information, from both existing research and organizational experience.

  • Two days of synthesizing and analyzing the gathered data.

  • Two days polishing our conclusions to refine and prepare for the next cycle.

What happens with the research?

We will share our findings with MTI's partners throughout the year through blogs and articles. After completing the fourth research cycle, we will prepare the year's work for publication. This will be used in consultation with our partner organizations, agencies, and churches to personalize best practices and healthy policies to meet the specific needs of each agency.

 FAQs

  • We are excited to be building our team! Our initial advisory committee includes:

    • Mark Case

    • Julia Watson

    • Tim Smith

  • Join us as a policy researcher. To learn more, please contact us.

  • Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have!