Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Restructuring, new friends, and the occasional duck.




Kelly, Alex and Kathy bending over backwards, all for CISV Canada. (plus the view from our site)


Hello CISV Sportsfans!

Well, your NJR's are now in beautiful Paipa, meditating on some wonderful memories made at the Americas' Regional Members Meeting 2007. At the meeting, we had the highest number of countries to ever attend an ARM meeting. We had representatives from Honduras, Peru and Ecuador.

The meeting was filled with Latin music, creativity and forward thinking. There was also the occasional visiting animal inside the meeting room (we were staying in a sort of farmhouse. There were kittens) Australia came and was accepted into our region. The representative Chris then went promptly onto joining the ARM team.

It was a meeting of evolutionary proportions. The Americas region (in the past) always had 2 regional coordinators (recos) who coordinated growth and development in the americas, and worked with the two IJRs. The recos worked much like we (your njrs) do. There was a new one elected every year at ARMM and they each served a two-year term. But this year, we hit a snag. There were no accepted nominations for a new reco. As a result, we decided that we needed to seriously examine the leadership of our region.

After several incredible sessions, we all reached a consensus on a new structure for the organization. There will be a team of people working to help develop several nuclei throughout the americas. For example, the US and Canada would be a nucleus, as would central america, and JB South (south america). The team will be a team of JBers from all over the Americas who will help these nuclei to grow and develop. They will be facilitated by a Facilitator, who will have a two-year term.

The ARM team this year will be:
Maru Ayam (ARG)
Martin Rottler (USA)
Chris Settle (Australia!)
Raquel Garcia (BRA)
Meli Monge (CRC)
Juli Buritica (COL)
Mateo Velez (COL)
Pascual Mendez (GUA)
Facilitator: Maji Lozano (COL)

You can get into contact with them at armteam@ijb.cisv.org They would love to hear your thoughts, answer questions, and make new friends!

All in all, it was an outstanding experience. There are many plans in the works for development, and there will be many opportunities for you to
get on up, and get involved!
(cue James Brown music)
With love,

Kathy and Alex




p.s. check out the newest issue of IJB thinks at http://www.ijb.cisv.org/ (on the right-hand collumn)

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