AJB Report 2013

Americas’ Junior Branch Team

Welcome to the first AJB Report!

AJB REPORT

The idea of a mid-year report came out of the ARMM in 2012 as a way to keep the AJB region and all of the CISV world informed on all the exciting developments and going-ons in the Americas regions. In this report, you will find information on all recent developments in: •The four neighborhoods: Andinos, CAM, JB North, JB South •Neighborhood Workshops •Americas’ Regional Conference (ARC) •IJB Cooperation & Updates •AJB Budget •Projects We hope you enjoy hearing about all the exciting things happening in AJB!!

Your AJB team, Ana | Grace | Mariana | Gerardo

NEIGHBORHOODS: Andinos: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama The Andinos neighborhood has been working together to plan Andinos 2013 in Colombia. The neighborhood NJRs worked together as the content staff for the workshop, alongside Andrea and Andrea, members of Con Lupa. Con Lupa is a great exchange between Colombia and Norway which is exploring Diversity, and helped the NJRs run sessions at the Andinos workshop. Andinos was thrilled to have the opportunity to work together with Con Lupa, and are very grateful for their involvement in planning and facilitating the workshop!

Panama also joined the Andinos neighborhood at the ARMM in 2012. One of the neighborhood goals is to figure out how we can integrate Panama into the region and what can be done to help Panama develop a strong JB. We are looking forward to a year filled with lots of neighborhood cooperation!

CAM: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico.

The CAM neighborhood has been through some really big changes in the past years. There are new NJRs and board members, as well as many brand new JB members wanting to work for the neighborhood. There has been communication between AJB Team and some countries who are having problems with their JB. CAM worked very hard to host this year’s CAM workshop in El Salvador - alongside the Americas Regional Conference. We had the pleasure of having Gerardo del Valle from Guate and Alejandro Fuchs as the lovely content staff! We want to thank them and everyone who has worked to ensure CAM happens for your hard work and passion - and a special thanks to the Trustees and NA board members for your support in helping to d eve l o p C A M ’ s n a t i o n a l j u n i o r branches! We know for sure this is the start of a wonderful relationship!

NEIGHBORHOODS: JB North: Canada, Mexico, USA

For the past two years, JB North has been working on the creation of a unique program for the three countries: CanExUs. The NJRs are planning this program with the aim of creating a strong sense of community within the JB North neighborhood, bring people together and further encourage and develop communication between the JBs in our neighborhood, JBs in the Americas and IJB. The dates for the first CanExUs aren’t set yet but we know we can’t wait for it to happen! For now, you can stay in touch with the JBs in JB North in our new JB North Facebook page !

JB South: Argentina, Brazil, Chile

JB South has been developing, and continuing growing recently. In December, AJB Team helped out with a training in Chile where JB development was taken into place. The training was a success with the re-activating the JB. JB South has also changed NJR's for all the region! The New NJR's are for Brasil, Daniel Avelar, for Argentina, Isabella Herrera, and Chile will be electing an NJR soon!

Brasil will be focusing on four specific goals chosen in their MWM and these are training leaders, effective communication, evolution of projects and activities, and more projects. Argentina will focus mostly on training, growth and development of their JB this year, and have been working on Right On Project (expect to hear more soon!!!).

AJB and ARC During these past few months we have had the pleasure to work together with ARC in different ways.

The AJB Team has been working on the ARC PB Sandwich (A Priorities and Budget Toolkit) and this progress was presented by ARC 2013 in El Salvador.

ARC in El Salvador during March 28-31, at the same time as the CAM Workshop!

We want to thank Alejandro Cordon for all the incredible support he has brought us in any new situation, for encouraging us to go beyond our comfort zones and for all the support we had during our JB Training in Chile.

Our Regional Coordinator, Alejandro!

We also want to thank all of the ARC Trustees who continue to work with us to develop our region! You can look forward to a report on all the things that happened at ARC coming soon!

Budget

The funding offered to the AJB Budget (including funding from both IJB and from ARC) is used to help develop local Junior Branch projects, as well as national and regional projects.

Thanks to these funds, AJB has had a year filled with new trainings, new (and old!) projects, and productive national meetings as well as neighborhood workshops.

On the next page, there are five graphs in which you will see how this money has been allocated as well as where it came from. The first graph (in blue) provides a general overview of where our budget came from & where it went, as well as how much was spent in 2012 and how much remained at the end of the year. The four graphs provide breakdown of the division of funds, into four areas:

ARMM (AJBM) Expenses

Projects

Workshops/Trainings

ARC Expenses

Note: The graphs show only the main projects that applied for funding, were approved and submitted their complete ERFs. Projects that either did not end up requiring the funds, did not send all the documents required, or did not link their objectives to regional goals are not listed.

IJB Budget

ARMM (Now AJBM) Participation

1782.5

700

2482.5

2482.5

0

Workshops

930

1000

1930

1930

0

Projects

1500

1500

1200

300

ARC Participation

1000

1000

682

318

Total

2712.5

4200

6912.5

6294.5

618

ARMM (Now AJBM) EXPENSES

ARC Budget AJB Total Budget Spent in 2012 Left in 2012

IJB ARC Budget Budget

AJB Team member’s ticket

275

AJB Team member’s ticket

907.5

AJB Team member’s ticket

600

700.00

1782.5

700.00

Total spent WORKSHOPS AND TRAININGS Mango Project in Andinos ticket

IJB Budget

ARC Budget

320

Andinos Workshop's (content staff ticket)

580

Training Peru (content Staff ticket)

262

Training Chile (content Staff ticket)

280

Training Chile (content Staff ticket)

88

Total spent

930

IJB Budget

ARC Budget

Spring Board Training Forum, Canada

200

NJBT, Brazil NJBM, Mexico JB Day, Mexico

100

Regional Portraits, Brazil

75

Training, Chile (content Staff ticket)

200

USA Training ticket NJBM Mexico MWM Brazil

250

Total spent

1200

PROJECTS

100 50

100 125

IJB Budget

ARC Budget

AJB Team member’s ticket and ARC fee

482

400

AJB Team member’s ARC fee

200

1000

Total spent

682

ARC EXPENSES

International Updates!

A message from your IJRs: Dear AJBers, We're Cande and James, your International Junior Representatives. We want to use this opportunity to tell you all how happy and proud we are about the development of the AJB in the last years. The increasingly cooperation between chapters and Junior Branches doesn't stop us to amaze us and we hope the region continues growing thanks to the ongoing cooperations.

We're extremely excited for having IJBC being hosted in the Americas and we can't wait to see a lot of you in July. But, still remember that if you cannot make it to Brazil we will soon be sharing some other ways in which you can get involved too.

Hope to hear more exciting news about you, Love, Cande & James PS. If you're still wondering who we are, read more about our role in JB Pedia: http:// www.ijb.cisv.org/jbpedia/IJR"

REGIONAL COOPERATION: At IJBC 2012, the Regional Teams from AJB, EJB and APJB met together to discuss opportunities for cooperation between the regions. There, we decided that each team would have one member who worked with Thomas (our amazing Regional Liaison from the IJB Committee) to coordinate cooperation throughout the year. Currently, Grace works with Kiki from EJB and Elyse from APJB to meet and discuss opportunities for collaboration, as well as common problems and best practices.

This year at every Regional Meeting (EJBM and JASPARC in March and AJB in July) there will be a common session, planned by Kiki, Elyse, Grace and Thomas, which focused on learning about the other JB regions and getting to know them a bit better!

Regional Cooperation at EJBM and JASPARC The Common Session planned by the Regional Team members and Thomas, our liaison, was ran very successfully at JASPARC in Lucknow, India, and at EJBM in Warsaw, Poland! Here are some pictures of the JBers from APJB and EJB learning more about all three regions, IJB, and so much more!

JASPARC

EJBM

PROJECTS At ARMM 2012, new projects were introduced to AJB. Here is our update on the progress of these projects: what has worked, what we need to keep working on and how YOU can get involved and develop our region!

Communication This project focused on the creation of a blog for AJB, which would allow our region to share resources, connect and interact as a region, as well as connect to IJB and the rest of CISV. The blog went live in February of 2013, and is currently being updated by AJB Team. You can check it out here. We are hoping to find JBers who want to work with us to contribute to the blog as well as determine content. Please reach out to the team if you are interested!

JB CPR The JB CPR project was started at ARMM with the intention of creating an information packet for struggling NA’s to help them organize a workshop to inspire and jumpstart NA’s.

This project was also worked on at IJBC and is now and IJB Project! The IJB Committee Liaison for the project is Thomas Bryenton, and anyone interested in getting involved can reach out at cpr@ijb.cisv.org.

AJB Infopack!

This project is focused on creating an infopack for JBers throughout the Americas region, in order to introduce them to AJB and familiarize themselves with the JBs in the region.

This project is still being developed, and anyone interested in contributing can contact AJB Team or Laura Berstler at laura.berstler@us.cisv.org

AJB Week The AJB Week project was created to be week filled with Skype/interactive meetings between neighborhoods, including communal activities between different JBs on common themes. AJB Week was planned as a way to unite the region during the year (as we do not have a mid-way regional meeting), and re-energize JBers!

The planning for AJB Week was defined or complete, but the project was not able to be executed on the intended dates due to a lack of JBers involved in the project. AJB Week will require more support from local JBers in order to be a success, but we are sure this will be possible!

AJB Week is currently being planned by Dow Linnell from Canada, and we encourage anyone interested to please reach out to her at dow.linnell@ca.cisv.org! This project could still be run in 2013, but without committed JBers to help, AJB week will not be possible.

RAISE YOUR ARM! The Raise Your Arm! project was created to establish a Regional Activity to link our JBs. In keeping with the Theme of the Year - Human Rights - the working group assigned an Article from the UN Declaration of Human Rights to every NA, and asks that the local JBs run some sort of artistic activity - a short film, song, picture, dance, drawing, etc - to portray that right. After each JB runs this activity, the result of their activity will be sent to the coordinators (Julianna Carmona, juli.cisv@gmail.com, and Matias Espinosa, matias.esp.pro@gmail.com and compiled into one big video showing our regional activity.

The original deadline for this project was February 27th, which was not reached. However, we feel strongly that this project has enormous potential to unite our amazing and diverse region and are determined to make it a success before AJBM in July 2013. Please look below to see what your NA’s Article is, and help us make this project a reality by running a project in your JB! You can reach Juli, Matias, or any member of AJB team with any questions.

ARGENTINA Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

BRASIL Article 23: (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable renumeration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

CANADA

ECUADOR Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

EL SALVADOR Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in sprit of brotherhood.

GUATEMALA Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of though, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

HONDURAS Article 24: Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 27: (1) Everyone has the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

MEXICO

CHILE

PANAMA

Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 28: Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedom set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 6: Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

COLOMBIA

Article 15: (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person.

COSTA RICA Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

PERU

USA Article 13: (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and return to his country.