About

Hi! My name is Cyndi Philkill

I’m a follower of Christ, and I love to help Pregnancy Centers train their volunteer advocates with skills that allow them to listen to client’s stories and to seek first to understand and then to be understood. 

Good client advocates are not born, they are made. It is my mission to provide you with the necessary tools to train your advocates to do the work of the ministry with confidence and integrity. 

As a pregnancy center staff person, you often wear a variety of hats and sometimes are forced to make choices about where to spend your time and resources. I would like to help you by providing what you need to have a vibrant and thriving volunteer program.

What is available on this website to help your volunteer program:

1. A blog that that each week suggests ideas and concrete help to develop and maintain a vibrant and growing volunteer program.
2. Training manuals including a volunteer manual as well as a Trainer’s Manual to guide you through facilitating a group training.
3. Resources consisting of interviews with others in the ministry, books, movies, websites and helpful, FREE downloads.

My Journey – How Equipped to Serve Came to Be

My journey started when I was the director of a Pregnancy Center in Baltimore, MD, I began feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the way we had been trained to interact with our clients. I prayed that the Lord would show me a new way forward. I began studying Jesus’ interaction with women in the Scriptures.

While reading these stories I asked myself, “What did Jesus do that made his interactions with these women so life-changing?” As I read and re-read the stories, I began to see the communication skills, attitudes and actions that made Christ’s interactions so powerful. I now had the basis upon which to write the Equipped to Serve training materials.

Equipped to Serve volunteer training is built upon Christ’s example of ministry.

The Curriculum Includes:

• Seven Fundamentals based on Jesus’ ministry to women found in the Scriptures. These fundamentals guide a volunteer through any client interaction.
• Case Studies and exercises to practice the skills before meeting with clients.   
• Information on issues like abortion, adoption, evangelism, and post abortion stress that volunteers will face when interacting with clients
• Volunteers use the fundamentals to evaluate themselves and what transpires during their client interactions, providing a constant growing and learning environment. 
• Read the story about how the Seven Fundamentals came to be here.

As a result of training the Equipped to Serve curriculum over the last 25 years, I have seen volunteers grow in faith, self-confidence, and love for the women we serve. All across the world these volunteers, now empowered by Christ’s example, care more deeply for clients in ways that are life-transforming for both the volunteer and the client. 

Join me in helping your volunteers serve with confidence & integrity. Here’s how: