Sweden vol 2: Exclusion in Transit

Each year, the International Junior Branch chooses an educational theme for JBs around the world to integrate into their programming and to help guide the International Junior Branch Conference. This year the theme is EXCLUSION. To launch this theme, the IJB put out an Exculsion packet which outlines the goals of the theme and also a series of activities that can be used to help integrate this theme. If you want to check out this action-packed-packed you can download it from the IJB website! (The username is: ijb.public, password: ijb)

Kelly and Alex are now in Sweden and you might say that our journey here was an exercise in inclusion. If you had looked at our orignal travel itinerary you might have called it "exclusive". It had us travelling like this: Toronto > Newark, USA > Stockholm, Sweden > Jonkoping, Sweden. Only two countries outside of Canada? With all the airports in the world to see, why be so exclusive? But so it was that we departed from Toronto early Saturday morning.

But our trip wasn't to be so exclusive after all!

We arrived in Newark mid-morning on Saturday and after a brief jaunt into New York City we arrived back to the air port only to discover that our flight to Stockholm had been cancelled! Oh No! (Note the sad-faced photo, graciously taken by a "Dr. Pepper" representative-- a fellow victim of the cancellation). Re-routing was in order and before we could spell "Jonkoping" we had a flight path that was considerably more in the spirit of INCLUSION!

Our new flight to Paris which has been scheduled to depart at 7:25 PM left the gate around 11:30. Some hours later the sun had re-appeared and we touched down in Paris. Was this to be the extent of the detour, you ask? No. No it wasn't. We had to race through the Paris airport to catch our flight to--can you guess?-- Oslo, Norway!

If Kelly and Alex were contestants on The Amazing Race would they win? Probably.

Well, they were on schedule to win this leg of the race with their flight from Olso to Stockholm. This was the second last flight to the final destination (only a shortie from Stockholm to Jonkoping remained!). But disaster struck when a roadblock appeared in Stockholm.

They missed their flight.

And so here we sit, friends, in a very comfortable, very Ikea, hotel inside the Stockholm airport-- the window literally looking out onto the concourse. A mild disaster? Perhaps not. With nowhere to have gone in Jonkoping and bags that wouldn't have met us there, our Ikea lounge looks like a pretty good way to spend the night (not to mention a daylong excursion day in Stockholm tomorrow).

In line with the IJB education theme, we should probably thank Scandanavian Airlines for making this leg of our trip thoroughly inclusive. When we finally land in Jonkoping tomorrow we will have seen 6 airports in 5 countries. If nothing else, this has been experiential education as it's most...experiential.

k&a

giving the goodbye gun to our missed flight to Jonkoping

Sweden Chronicles, vol. 1

After a long period of anticipation and preparation, Kelly and Alex well be departing for Sweden on Saturday, July 22nd. Over the two weeks they will spend in the city of Jonkoping, Sweden, they will participate in three international CISV meetings, meet hundreds of CISVers from almost every member country and be a part of the discussions on topics such as the three-week village and the infamous re-branding. Throughout it all they will be representing the juniors of CISV Canada.

We need your help!

We want our time in Sweden not just to be our opportunity to participate in the international goings-on of CISV but also your opportunity to do so! That's why we are going to be updating the NJR Blog on a regular basis and hoping for feedback and input from YOU! Here's a quick run down of what Kelly and Alex will be participating in in Sweden.

America's Regional Members Meeting: America's Regional Members (or ARM) is the group of CISV Junior Branches from North, Central and South America. At this meeting, JB representatives from every ARM country will spend time discussing some topics like:

-- The ARM Tourism project- a new initiative to help those travelling in the Americas!
-- How can communication between ARM juniors be improved?
-- Election for a new Regional Coordinator (ReC0), the equivalent of the JB co-chair for ARM.

International Junior Branch Conference: IJBC! This is some seriously exciting business! NJRS from every country coming together to share common problems ans brain-birth brand new solutions! Wow. This is CISV fireworks at their brightest. Ever wonder what minicamp is like in the philipiness? We'll find out for you, just ask! Some of the topics on the table at IJBC include...

--Exclusion! The topic of exclusion has been the theme the IJB for the past two years. Where do we find exclusion in CISV? How can we work to minimize exclusion?
--What are the goals of the International Junior Branch? How can juniors from all chapters of CISV meaningfully work together?
--An Election for International Junior Representative! Marcos from Brazil and Trisha from the Philipines are running to be IJB-- Check out their questionnaires at the IJB Website.

Annual International Meeting: This is the big one. If CISV were the united Nations, this would be the General Assembly. The Annual International Meeting is the forum for all of the trustees from every member country of CISV to come together not only to discuss but to make real decisions about the way that CISV operates. Some of the topics will be:

--The three-week village: Do we keep this new model or stick to Dorris' original four?
--CISV's infamous re-branding project: the voting has taken place and it's time to decide how to implement our new tagline and standardize our image
--See the complete set of motions on the CISV Resources Website. There are 1o motions in total!


We want to know what you think! Leave us a comment on the blog or send us an e-mail at njr@ca.cisv.org. Let us know if you would like to know more about a specific topic or if feel strongly about something and want your input included in the discussion.

Until next time! Happy Summers, K&A