Friday, August 10, 2007

Closing time


Well friends,


The NJR adventure in Colombia is drawing to a close.

It has been a journey of late nights, long meetings and good friends. It's been an evolutionary, revolutionary time to be meeting with such fantiastic people from all around the world. JB was deconstructed, evaluated, attitude-checked, knowledge-juiced , and skill-tested.


As we think about our trip home and national camp set to being on tuesday (the 14th), and we are full of motivation and energy to bring back and share with you. We are looking forward to sharing some stories with participants from every chapter in Canada! And of course, hearing about all of your summer adventures.


We hope that all of you have learned, laughed, and smiled as much as the two of us have over the past couple of weeks. We will see some of you very soon, and wish everyone a sunny rest of the summer.


With love,


Kathy and Alex.


Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Congradulations to a wonderful friend.


Hello CISV Canada!


As you blog frequenters know, our very own Kelly Bowden was running for the posistion of international junior representative. We would like to inform you that Kelly was elected just moments ago, and we would like to give a huge shout out.


CONGRADULATIONS KELLY BOWDEN

IJR 2007-2009


We hope you are all having a wonderful day,


love from your NJRs,


kathy and alex.

21 vs 28 days

Live from the plenary! Alex and Kathy here with an update from the discussion about the 21 vs. 28 day village question. Right now, the board of trustees (the elected representatives from each country of CISV) are discussing how to respond to the research that was done about villages... On the table is a decision for the board to make... Here are some of the questions...

Should villages be 28 days?
Should villages be 21 days?
Should we keep both options?
Should we eliminate village and create a new program?
Should there be a further re-thinking process?
Should we put this decision off until later...?

A decision has to be made. What do you think? We'll pass the word along.

With love from the plenary.

Alex & Kathy

Monday, August 06, 2007

Deconstructing and Reconstructing IJBC


We know what you're wondering: Who the heck are those two girls in green?! I thought this was a blog about Kathy and Alex! Well don't worry, this still is the "NJR blog" but we wanted to be a little bit more inclusive and introduce a few of our Canadian friends who are here with us in Colombia. But who are these mysterious ladies in green and why are they important?

We'll tell you.

Erin (taller, holding the mug) comes from the Ottawa chapter. She enjoys reading Harry Potter, tall people and speaking in high pitched voices. Erin also enjoys deceiving CISV International; recently at IJBC, during an energizer Erin sarcastically explained that she had learned the energizer from J.K. Rowling who "was a leader at my village when I was eleven...before she was famous." Unfortunately, Erin's sarcasm is a little bit too sarcastic and some members of the international community here took her seriously.

Kelly (shorter, eating an apple) comes from the Fredericton chapter. She enjoys scarves, people who validate her good ideas, drinking coffee out of little mugs and deconstructing ideas. Kelly is also playing a very special role here at the International Junior Branch Conference (IJBC) and the Annual International Meeting (AIM). Kelly is a candidate for the position of International Junior Representative (IJR) which is a similar position to NJR but for the entire world of Junior Branch! Kelly is running in this election against Memo from Mexico and Ida from Sweden. The election takes place TODAY!

One thing that the IJRs (and the IJR candidates) do is to plan the International Junior Branch Conference. This conference is a meeting of JBers from all over the world. It is an opportunity for juniors to come together, share experiences, generate new ideas, gain skills and strengthen the fabric of Junior Branch around the world. This year, the IJBC focused especially on DECONSTRUCTING JB as well as JUNIOR BRANCH SELF-EVALUATION and also CREATIVITY.

Here's a question to ponder... Can any group of youth working toward the JB goals be considered a Junior Branch?

Want more to ponder? There is a document called the Final Packet which has summaries of all of the sessions from IJBC with detailed descriptions. If you're curious, e-mail us and we'll send it to you! (njr@ca.cisv.org)

With love from the plenary of the Annual International Meeting!

Alex & Kathy

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)