IJRs midway meetingPart II - The meating

James & MateoGreat Britain | 20-24 February 2012

Monday 20 FebruaryOrganisational ReviewFood: Stir-fry pork with black beans.

The previous weekend, we had been invited to join the IEC during their Mid Way Meeting in Newcastle to deal with the recommendations of the Organisational Review. The Organisational Review was approved in 2010 to analyse the structure of CISV International, and make recommendations for how we can better achieve our purpose. At this meeting, we defended the role of Junior Branch, and looked at how JB should be integrated into the recommendations.

Having had a week to process the information and reflect, we discussed our priorities, and how we were going to involve JB World in this process.

We realised that to make the most of this opportunity in a time of change, and to really adapt to achieve our goals and purpose, we needed to have a ‘deep’ evaluation of what JB is, what we do and why we do it. From that point, we would be better placed to make decisions about our structure, and how we would integrate into CISV International.

To include JB World in this process of decision making, we worked out a plan to run a session to brainstorm the goals of JB at each of the regional meetings, finishing at IJBC. The aim of these sessions will be to create 4 new goals for JB, and to draft a new governing document that describes what JB is and what we do.

Please read the accompanying document ‘Organisational Review & JB’.

Tuesday 21 FebruaryIJBC planningFood: Pancakes for pancake day!

One of the main points of this MWM was to start the planning for the International Junior Branch Conference (IJBC) which will take place at the end of July 2012 in Paris, France.

We are happy to announce the four goals that we have set for IJBC:

1. Challenge and develop our organisation2. Develop individuals and leaders3. Encourage education and action4. Build an IJB structure and community

From these, we already have a provisional schedule, and have started thinking of ideas for sessions.

During this time, we also looked at the applications we had received to be facilitators for IJBC, and put together a group who will deliver the content there. We have contacted them and they have mostly agreed - we will announce them with the infopack!

Wednesday 22 FebruaryCommunicationsFood: Spaghetti Bolognese

Today we focused on two main areas to do with communications within IJB: Firstly we looked at the results of the communications review, to make recommendations to the team, and secondly we skyped with Denise at the International Office about the progress of the new website.

Communications review

We were impressed by the level of responses, and we’d really like to thank Mau and Jerry in particular for putting this survey together, and summarising the results. The results show some tools which weren’t attracting good use, some successes, and offered some ways we can improve.

The Websites and Media groups of the IJB Team are now looking at the tools they are in charge of, and how to adapt them to make them more useable and solve issues.

Website

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that this will be finished before September 2012, but we have started writing content for it. With Denise, we discussed a number of technical issues and also confirmed the pages that we wanted. When it is launched, the website will replace the existing IJB Website, which is very out of date, and also the JB Library as the centre of where we store our documents.

Thursday 23 FebruaryIJB Team workFood: Formal dinner at Emmanuel College

Today we looked at all the other work that the IJB Team was doing. We can say that things are really progressing well in all areas, and we’re really happy with the work the team are doing.

One group we spent a lot of time meeting on skype with was the Training group. They have been working on our new IJB Training curriculum, and we’re proud to announce it is very nearly ready. It will be used for our first ever JB Training at an RTF in Guatemala, as well as to compliment our Chapter Development training with RDT. We’d like to thank Anna especially for creating this curriculum.

We also discussed the upcoming trainings with the training group, and discussed some of the issues with finding trainers, and also other things like getting feedback from trainings delivered. We are looking to set up more formal processes and databases of our trainers, and how we select them.

We also had a skype with the Evaluation group, where we discussed the ongoing evaluation of IJB. We discussed how we were getting responses from different groups of people, and how we were going to deal with the information. We are looking to release the results and put forward some proposals by mid-July.

Friday 24 FebruaryWrap upFood: ‘Ma Po’ Beef with rice

We have had a very productive week, focusing on some big issues such as the Organisational Review, starting to plan IJBC as well as keeping on top of the work of the IJB Team. We also had a nice skype with Julia (Canada) and contacted a lot of people for different reasons.

We’d like to take this opportunity to say thanks to the IEC for their continued support and for including us in the Organisational Review process - we really appreciated our time in Newcastle and hope that this cooperation will continue. Also thanks to Denise from the IO for her continued and regular advice, which keeps us firmly on track, and also the other staff at the IO for answering questions and helping us keep on top of the admin.

We’d also like to thank the IJB Team for their work - keep on doing what you’re doing cos it’s great!

See you soon!

Mateo & JamesInternational Junior Representatives 2011-12