2015 IJR Candidate Questionnaire Gaspard Simon
Hi everyone! My name is Gaspard. I am French and will turn 23 this summer. Currently living in Paris, I studied Engineering and Entrepreneurship and I am now working as a consultant. I discovered CISV more than 12 years ago while preparing for my village in Norway.
Fruits and vegetables are not my best friends but I am starting to get used to them even if it is still a bit tricky with my dear friend broccoli. I really like sports especially cycling and skiing. If you have any tips or good places to go I’d love to hear about them. If there is anything you’d like to know or ask me, feel free to contact me via email gaspard.simon@fr.cisv.org.
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2015 IJR Candidate Questionnaire – Gaspard Simon
Which ASK gained outside of CISV will you bring to the role of IJR? Please list three. The role of IJR is a complex one. An IJR needs to be very organised and responsive. But I don’t think that is all that’s needed. Indeed for a representative, it is very important to understand other people’s point of view, defend and present them the best way possible so that International Junior Branch is developed according to its diversity. Here are Attitudes, Skills and Knowledge that I believe I have gained in my life and would help me with my role of IJR. • Attitude: This one comes from sports. I am always willing to challenge what is set, to always try to do better and to never give up. This is something I learnt from struggling and wondering if you can really achieve what you have set yourself to do. In the end, you realise you can do it and thus next time, you try to do even more. Having done also team sports and especially adventure racing and rugby, I believe we can do more as a team. A team channels that energy to always try your best. As a representative working with a team, it is important to keep this attitude so that we take Junior Branch to a next level and never settle with what we are or have done.
• Knowledge: This is about a method and a way of thinking that I learnt throughout life experiences but more specifically during my Entrepreneurship studies. In order to build something that works, it is very important to take into account the pain and problems of people and solve them. This is the key to a great startup for example. I believe this will help a lot in the role of IJR because it is always important to take everybody’s perspective into account in order to find the best solution for everyone. Indeed there is always a solution. And in order to find it, it is key to understand people who are impacted by the problem and to look at things with their perspective. I will bring this knowledge to the role of IJR.
• Skills: I am organised, concise, rigorous and straight to the point. I believe it is something that describes me and will serve me well should I become IJR. I learnt this from my engineering studies where it is very important to explain yourself clearly to present your answer so that everyone can understand it quickly. Overall, I would say that I have been through different experiences in my life which taught me many things but most importantly, I have learnt to always adapt to new situations, give and get the most out of them. And this is what I intend to do if I become IJR using, among other things, the ASK stated above.
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2015 IJR Candidate Questionnaire – Gaspard Simon
If elected, your IJR term will include a full year of educational content work on Sustainable Development. Please outline a project on this topic that could be youth-led, but would also engage all of CISV – chapters, programmes, international meetings, RTFs, etc. I strongly believe that Sustainable Development is one of the foundations of our work as an organisation. Within CISV and Junior Branch, sometimes we don’t show our full potential because we are not able to keep all the knowledge we have gained and pass it on. I believe that having roles which overlap for at least one year like we often have in Junior Branch is a great way to ensure this sustainability and should be kept. Keeping this in mind, to me, Sustainable Development is not only about the ecological point of view like we often emphasise on. It is also the social and economical Sustainable Development, the Sustainable Development of people and of our organisation in a broader way that matters. My project would be about this social/people aspect. Given that we have a system which seems to work to keep that sustainability in Junior Branch, I think we are qualified to run a project based on this theme.
• Activities based on personal development and community building • Activities run by Junior Branch with the help of other organisations, coaches and other members of CISV A theme for those activities could be leadership and team sports. As a first step, JBers and other CISVers could meet with a team sport coach for example. Indeed their role is key to build a team in order for it to win but also so that players stay and work for the team while improving. The goal of the project would be to strengthen the link between people in the organisation but also to develop them so they can grow. Running those activities and thinking about this topic would ensure a great flow of communication within our organisation but will also help participants grow in their everyday life.
Here is what the project would look like: • Activities at every level of the organisation led by youth and involving everyone
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2015 IJR Candidate Questionnaire – Gaspard Simon
A finding of the JB Review and BlueSpark's Organizational Review is that CISV International is not fully maximizing the potential of youth participation within the organization. What opportunities for youth within CISV are not fully utilized, if any? Youth has a central role in developing itself with Junior Branch. It is also contributing to the development of CISV by doing so. Youth is giving its way of working and energy to the rest of the organisation which is something CISV is benefiting a lot from. Thus CISV is able to get the most out of its youth participants, who are also willing to get further involved in the organisation. This aspect is maybe where opportunities for youth within CISV are not fully utilised. Youth is maybe not as involved in the development of the organisation and its content as it could be. Youth is the driving force of our organisation and with Junior Branch, youth is developing itself thus
contributing to the development of CISV. However, it is not fully utilising opportunities to be involved in boards and committees at every level of the organisation. Such opportunities don’t attract every JBer. And this is fine because not everyone is willing to get involved in this way. JBers also like to get involved in projects. However, those projects are struggling to have an impact outside of Junior Branch. This is maybe another opportunity where CISV International is not fully utilising the potential of youth participation. Some of those projects are truly amazing and could definitely benefit CISV in general.
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2015 IJR Candidate Questionnaire – Gaspard Simon
With which parts of the JB Review Discussion Paper do you agree, with which do you disagree, and why? Please list at least one of each. This discussion paper is great way for JBers to realise what we like about Junior Branch and what we feel passionate about. It also give us new ideas and other ways to work. Below, I will tackle one negative aspect and one positive aspect of it. Of course feel free to get in touch with me if you want to discuss further on the topic. One part of the report that I agree with, is the benefits of Pathways to youth members of CISV, or Junior Branch today. I like the idea that the next Junior Branch or Pathways can offer youth opportunities which: •
Are diverse, people can choose to get involved for different periods of time on subjects that they like
• Offer people to be active global citizens which I believe is a very important part of CISV This is linked with some of the elements stated in the guiding principles of the review: “continuation and growth of the
creative spirit currently provided by youth participant across CISV”.
It is very important to recognise that JBers are in Junior Branch to do things they are passionate about, and that their creativity and energy is a key aspect to it. To me, those elements are the key ones that we really need to keep when thinking about changing Junior Branch.
A part of the report that I disagree with is the top-down and professional approach that such a structure has, in the way it is described in the Discussion Paper. To me, the way information, training and support are all coming from the top and given by boards doesn’t reflect the way youth should work in our organisation. I believe JBers value the self governance we have. And I don’t think this is going against a better collaboration of Junior Branch with the rest of the organisation. It is simply the way youth works and how it develops itself best: with the learning by doing approach we value so much in CISV. I fully recognise it is key to find ways for youth to be more involved but I doubt that boards giving mandates to youth coordinators is the solution for that. JBers are very good at educating youth and are showing it today in the way Junior Branch works. This is especially happening in meetings which are key to developing youth and thus our organisation. The rest of the organisation is already supporting Junior Branch in running meetings and this should continue but not as a “job” or something similar to it.
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2015 IJR Candidate Questionnaire – Gaspard Simon
If you were setting a year plan for IJB Team 2015–16, what do you think the priorities for the upcoming year should be?
IJB Team’s structure has been going through many changes over the past years, it is hard to ensure the sustainability of its work in this context. This aspect has to be taken into account when thinking about the priorities of the next team’s year plan. On top of that, team members have very diverse roles being either specialists or working in committees.
which will be able to understand how important its role is.
The IJB Team are people working together to reach specific goals. Having different functions in the team, individuals have personal goals as well as common ones. In order to work well together, I believe it is key for members to understand those common and individual goals.
Strengthening their work is very important if we want to develop cooperation and collaboration between countries to truly emphasise the global organisation that we are. In order to do so, regional teams need support because they can’t help and support the development of Junior Branch’s potential on their own. This is where the IJB Team could have a bigger impact. During this past year I understood the potential that such a collaboration could bring to Junior Branch and to CISV in general at every level, we need to use it!
This is why I think one priority for the team should be to fully grasp their role and develop their team spirit while sharing their work together. By doing so, the role and actions of the IJB Team will be clearer to its members and more importantly to the rest of Junior Branch
A second priority I would set for IJB Team is working more closely with Regional Teams. I was part of last year’s European Junior Branch Team and I realised that Regional Teams have a key role in our organisation as they are close to JBers at national and local levels.
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2015 IJR Candidate Questionnaire – Gaspard Simon
You are explaining JB to someone who is new to the organization. How do you explain the relationship between JB and the rest of the organisation?
First I would start by saying Junior Branch is a place for youth to develop, grow and educate itself. It is a place where the youth group of CISV is able to create activities, run minicamps and develop its way of working together. It is a place where youth can foster within the spirit and values of CISV which is based on peace education and linked with our 4 content areas. This is what I believe Junior Branch is. JBers gain a lot of skills from being part of Junior Branch and that is great but it is simply a consequence from being part of it. As such, Junior Branch might seem separate from the rest of the organisation but I don’t think it is entirely true. Indeed, Junior Branch has great ties with the rest of the organisation. Junior Branch is helping chapters grow and function via those activities it runs. At national level, involved JBers’ voice is often heard and valued in committees or boards. Of course this depends on the country, board or committee. But in the end Junior Branch helps keep youth involved in CISV throughout the calendar year and year after year thanks to local, national and international meetings, activities and projects. For this reason, we can compare the relationship between Junior Branch and
the rest of the organisation to an amateur football or rugby club. Junior Branch is the youth teams which are very often coached and trained by slightly older youth with the support of more experienced trainers and the structure of the club (the rest of the organisation). Young players improve by playing with their team and training younger teams as they get more experienced. The club itself is supporting this development by providing fields, material and infrastructure. Like all youth teams, not all Junior Branches work well with the rest of the organisation but they are striving for it. Like in Junior Branch, young players can, in the end, decide either to keep on playing “for fun” or to get involved in “adult teams” or in the club’s structure. However getting involved in the club’s structure isn’t the primary goal of youth teams as Junior Branch’s primary goal isn’t to get JBers involved in the rest of the organisation. Its primary goal is education and sharing with other youth members of the organisation, just like youth teams learn to play football or rugby through fun and experimenting. And Junior Branch is definitely not a mandatory step for someone who wishes to get involved in CISV.
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2015 IJR Candidate Questionnaire – Gaspard Simon
Describe an experience in Junior Branch that has motivated you. One of the experiences that has motivated me the most in Junior Branch is probably the International Junior Branch Conference in 2012 in Paris. I was home staff there as well as for the Annual International Meeting that followed. I think it is the place where I understood and realised how important Junior Branch is for CISV and how much we can learn from it. It is the event and experience that triggered my will to be more involved in CISV and in Junior Branch.
During this meeting, I was lucky to be around JBers from all around the world with very diverse points of view. Talking
with everyone there was very beneficial and I learnt a lot from it. I was also excited to see that anyone could be there, help and start building something. On top of that, there were other members of CISV present and I really felt like I was part of a global movement. It felt so fulfilling to be among such a group of JBers and also talk with the rest of CISV. I didn’t have the opportunity to attend all the sessions since I was home staff but the ones I did go to were great and made me realise the impact and the education Junior Branch brings.
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2015 IJR Candidate Questionnaire – Gaspard Simon
What can Junior Branch learn from your favourite childhood toy? After thinking back to my childhood and also asking around I have to admit, I remembered that one of my favourite toys was Kapla. Kaplas are identical little sticks of wood with which you can build pretty much anything (see picture below). It is also very flexible as there are very different ways to use the Kaplas in the structure. And in the end you can simply destroy and do it all over again until you are fully satisfied or until you just get bored as it often happens when you are a child. Playing with Kaplas is very exciting because there are many challenges to it: • Building things • Making decisions • Taking risks because the whole thing is not always very well balanced • Being patient and taking time to build it properly in order not to make everything fall after 5 seconds
I think what Junior Branch can learn about me from this, is: • I like building things, take care of them and see them developing until the end • Having fun is also part of the process while building it • In the end you can always start again and do something better and that’s only up to you to decide
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Thanks for reading! Talk to you soon.