RECAP
What is the International Junior Branch Conference (IJBC)? IJBC is a 5 day conference that brings together JBers from around the world. It is a time for educational sessions, sharing best practices, voting on motions and electing the new International Junior Representative (IJR). This year, it was held from August 2 - August 7 in Medellin, Colombia.
The theme this year was Conexión, Participación, Innovación All of the sessions were focused on one of the three strands. Conexión focused on how make connections in and outside of CISV. Participación focused on what makes JB editing and what it means to be an active global citizen. Innovación looked at how inspiration, diversity, and creativity are vital parts of Junior Branch.
Education Session Highlights During the session, “Participation [noun]”, definitions of an active global citizen were placed around the room. Individually, we read over them and then discussed which definitions we thought were most accurate in small groups. Afterwards, we took turns sharing our own understanding of active global citizenship. Next, we divided into groups based on current global issues we wanted to discuss and shared our own perspectives as citizens of our respective countries. Finally, we divided into different groups and came up with ways our local communities impacted a larger global issue.
Sharing Best Practices One of our favourite sessions was one where we were given the opportunity to share best practices. The facilitators would read out an area of JB, such as “recruitment” or
“educational content”, and we would place ourselves along a scale of “great” to “needs improvement”. Then, we were given time to talk to other JBers and NJRs to share our own knowledge and learn from each other. Hearing success stories from other JBs inspired us to start new conversations in JB Canada and bring back new ideas to improve our JB.
New International Junior Representative At IJBC, Gaspard from France became Senior International Junior Representative, and Flora from Brazil was elected as Junior. We are excited to be working with both of them and know they will do a fantastic job representing Junior Branch.
If you want to hear more about IJBC, or have any questions, feel free to reach out to the NJRs on Facebook through our page, NJR Canada, or by email njr@ca.cisv.org!
Big thank you to Amanda, from JB Chile, for all the amazing pictures!!