Abbigail Rioux, Curriculum Consultant: "It All Starts With an Idea"

Abbigail Rioux

Abbigail Rioux grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia before making the big west coast/east coast jump in 2002 when she moved to New York. What started out as a four-month internship opportunity turned into an intense full-time life spent in Bushwick, Brooklyn, working for a Christian inner-city, non-profit organization.

Abbigail held the position of Education & Training Director for some 10 years before deciding on another big move. In 2019 she made a giant leap across the pond, this time landing in Den Haag, the Netherlands. It’s here in the Netherlands that she's now established her own consultancy business in the field of creative (& FUN) faith-based education & training development.

You were with Metro World Child for 10 years as head of Metro's education and training programs. Could you give a sense of what motivated you to come to New York? And how you chose Metro?

I went to New York to do the four-month internship program that Metro had running at the time. That was in 2002. Metro was something that I just 'stumbled upon' in a sort of random way, a brief visit to the city to connect with a friend, and in that short time period, I was then introduced to the ministry. I was instantly intrigued and felt it was the right next step to apply for the internship program, though in all honesty, I knew very little of what that entailed at the time! After that four-month period, I was invited to join the Sidewalk Sunday School staff. During the years that followed, I often had the opportunity to work closely with Gloria Bridgeman and her dept, the woman running Education and Training at the time, and she eventually offered me her position when she resigned.  

Looking back on that experience, what are a few lessons you learned while at Metro?

So many lessons. It's so hard to narrow it down to a few. 

In terms of my work and skills acquired for what I do now, it all was developed during my time at Metro. I'm grateful for that and for those who poured into me and taught me while I was there. I've learned the value of true and lasting friendships. Some of my closest friendships and the people I'm in touch with the most are relationships I made there. 

I learned to aim to love people without an agenda, and that I think came about having learned very well how to love people with an agenda (that's the byproduct of a large and 'successful' ministry I think). I learned to build into other people and encourage their gifts and talents and give them space to flourish. And not to hold on to a position or title. I learned that God is trustworthy in taking care of the details of my life and working things out and together for my good. I learned that working with kids is so much fun and truly life-giving (and I miss that part a lot). I learned that having balance in my life, work and 'ministry' and personal and all of it, is not only good and healthy but something that I prefer. 

How about your move to the Netherlands? What was the motivation for the change?

For some time I knew in my heart that my time at Metro was coming to a close, I didn't know however what my next step was going to look like AT ALL. Toward the end of 2017 is when I finally handed in my resignation, my suggested succession plan and person for the department, etc. I still had zero clue as to what my next step would be. 

I was in the process of getting my United States citizenship so I was stuck in the country for an indefinite amount of time (so actually a terrible time to quit my job really). I was basically faced with being jobless and homeless, but then Metro offered me a completely new job while I waited: to build a Metro Kids website. And then after that, to redo their Metro World Child website. I had no experience or knowledge when I started, but it taught me so many things that I am now putting to use in my own business today! God works in really cool ways. It was a couple of months into my Education & Training Department resignation and new website work that I was invited to meet for a coffee with a man named Christian Peters. 

He had heard that I had resigned from my position and was wanting to tell me about what he and his wife's organization, Hope for One, did. Our conversation was maybe an hour and I knew in my gut that was my next step. Christian had proposed the idea of working remotely from anywhere in the world near an airport but said that Europe (or Africa even) would probably be more convenient. So that's where my thoughts and plans went towards. Initially, I thought I'd be moving to Berlin, but for various reasons that wasn't working out and I was unsure of what to do next. But since I'd been staying with some friends in Holland, I visited a Dutch immigration lawyer, and as it turned out, with my new American citizenship that I had just acquired, and thanks to a treaty between the United States and Holland, I was able to live and work in the Netherlands if I started my own consultancy/freelancing business. Choosing The Hague was purely a strategy to put me an equal distance between the only two cities where I had close friends living and was a straight shot on a train up to the airport!     

You now are a consultant, doing curriculum development, training, and copywriting. With an emphasis on faith-based teaching for kids. Could you talk a bit about each of those components of your consulting work?

Regarding curriculum - I can develop a large set of lessons (ie. a five-year, 52-week complete set), or individual themed lessons to address a specific topic, sets of devotionals, or even themed packages for a week of Vacation Bible School. 

Regarding training - Depending on what someone's needs are, I can develop a training course or package based off of content I already have or expand and develop new material based upon their request. 

Regarding copywriting - With all of the writing that I do, I've found that various opportunities for copywriting have come up (website copy, book snippets, speech writing, etc.) and it's not surprising to me that I quite like that type of work, too. I just really enjoy writing!    

You have done a lot of work for Hope Clubs, which offers curriculum and training in Germany, Central Africa, and West Africa. What has that experience been like?

My experience has been really good. I've been impacted greatly and incredibly challenged in many ways also. 

It's been a challenge to take my background in kids ministry and all of the principles and knowledge that I have in curriculum writing and training, and then creatively adapt it all and be able to apply it to a wide variety of regions and people. 

I love being a part of something that is about empowering others and basically working myself out of a job (one aspect of my role is training trainers globally and working myself out of the picture so that it's locally run in the long term).

What is it like to do consulting work that involves such distinct cultures? What lessons have you learned?

It can be super challenging. It takes time and I think that learning different cultures is like learning a different language. It takes patience and humility I would say, spending a lot of time listening to how others think and operate and not 'coming in hot' with your way of doing things and thinking you're always right or that somehow you know best in an environment that you've literally never stepped foot into before. So I think it's important to value and respect people and listen to others and their perspectives and work together to see what's needed, what will actually work (on the ground, not just in theory), and be open to finding creative solutions together.  

Your website contains the tagline, "It all starts with an idea." Can you expand on this a bit?

I truly believe that everything starts with an idea. If you can think it, you can create it. From a single idea, you can brainstorm it, build it out and tangibly create it. I absolutely love ideas and the process of creating something from scratch. 

For more information about Abbigail Rioux and her consultancy business, check her website.