USA NJRs’ 2014 JB Canada Report
Table of Contents Summary
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JB Canada 101 JB Canada’s Structure Chapter Check-in National Camp & Peace Bus
5 7 9
What we did at NJBM Town Hall Motions Inking Together JB Report Budget Motions
11 12 13 14 15 16
Essay and Conclusion JB Adult Relations Conclusion
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Summary Hey! How’s it going? My name’s Daniel, and along with Rachel Buff, I am a National Junior Representative for JB USA. I took a trip to Halifax, Canada in November 2014 to attend JB Canada’s National Junior Board Meeting. I learned a lot, too much to fit on one page, but if I had too, here are the things I consider most important to share: 1. Canada is cold is because JB Canada is so cool. It’s true. JB Canada does a lot of really interesting, unique things, two of which are Peace Bus and National Camp. Peace Bus is an official national program of CISV Canada started by the JB in which participants travel across Canada stopping at many of the chapters to do activities and service projects. National Camp is like our National Mini-Camp, except theirs is nine days long, and a lot of the activities are planned by the participants. 2. JB Canada works differently from JB USA In Canada there’s only one, national, executive team, the ‘Eh’ Team. This team has nine members and is chaired by the NJRs. In addition, three members, the Development Committee Chairs and Junior Risk Manager, chair national committees. These national committees are made up of representatives from each chapter. For example, each chapter has a Local Risk Manager who serves on the National Junior Risk Management Committee. 3. JB Canada has these things called Town Halls, and they’re great. A Town Hall is a forum during which anyone is allowed to bring up a topic. Some of the things we talked about at NJBM were activity planning, recruitment/retention, LGBT inclusion, and national merchandise. 4. Compared to JB Canada’s National Junior Board Meeting, ours is more of an informative camp. In planning our NJBM, we try to create engaging activities which will create conversations that we believe will be valuable for JB USA. Partly because their NJBM is about half the size of ours, JB Canada’s NJBM is much more direct. Instead of having an activity that explored the role of social media in our society and in CISV, only for part of which we talked about the new social media guideline, in Canada we just discussed the new guideline and JB Canada’s social media policy. It’s made me think, if our NJBM is an informative minicamp, when is our board meeting?
JB Canada struggles with a lot of the same things we do. It has also experimented with a few things that we haven’t yet. It is a truly exceptional national association with a lot that we and the rest of JB World can learn from. In comparing ourselves with them, we can reveal JB USA’s triumphs and short comings, and have a more informative self-reflection. How individual national associations collaborate and share ideas will, to a large degree, determine how well our organization is able to accomplish its mission.
Daniel Krajnak USA NJR 2014-2016 daniel.krajnak@us.cisv.org
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  JB Canada 101 JB Canada is both really cool and really unique, especially from the US. There is not as much focus on regions and there is a ton of local representation on national committees. JB Canada has one executive committee chaired by their NJRs and a few larger committees chaired by members of the executive team. There are 11 JB chapters in Canada, and about 300 JBers (the US has 21 chapters, and about 600 JBers).
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JB Canada’s Structure Ok, so JB Canada’s structure is comprised of the “Eh” Team, and the committees the members of the team chair. I promise it’s not that complicated. I do not have space to explain JB USA’s structure in this document, and because I think that the most valuable insights can be found through comparison, parts of this section may be a little confusing for those without prior knowledge of JB USA’s structure.
The “Eh” Team The “Eh” Team, or National Executive Board, is kind of like our National Youth Committee and National Junior Board of Trustees combined. Each member has a specific role, and serves as a liaison to one of Canada’s five regions.
• National Junior Representatives (NJR) — Just like JB USA, JB Canada has two NJRs, a junior and a senior. JB Canada’s NJRs for the most part have the same responsibilities and perform the same functions as JB USA’s NJRs do—they represent JB Canada at the international meetings and chair executive committees. In particular, they chair the “Eh” Team.
• National Camp Coordinator (NCC) — First of all, CISV Canada’s National Camp is very different from our National Mini-Camp. Theirs is 9 days long, and they have participants plan most of the activities. Canada’s NCC finds the site, creates registration, selects the staff and many other things our National Mini-Camp Committee Chair would do. The NCC sits on, but does not have a vote on, the “Eh” Team.
• The Internal Communications Coordinator (ICC) — The ICC is responsible for
facilitating communications within JB Canada. This person focuses on keeping JBers of Canada in contact with one another. He or she also works with the External Communications Coordinator to keep the CISV Canuck, JB Canada’s online blog, updated. Here’s a link to the CISV Canuck—http://cisvcanuck.wordpress.com
• The External Communications Coordinator (ECC) — The ECC is responsible for all communications connecting JB Canada to the greater CISV world. This person focuses on encouraging JBers within Canada to connect with resources and organizations outside of CISV that will be useful and relevant to their ongoing local activities. The ECC also works to involve JB Canada in international and regional JB communities.
• The Development Committee Chairs (DCC) — Two Development Committee Chairs are elected each year to, with the Development Committee, create and maintain projects that benefit JB Canada. Examples include a JB Canada storybook, an LGBTQ and Inclusion Blog, and a Local Junior Representative (JB President) handbook.
• The Peace Bus Representative— The Peace Bus Representative helps to coordinate and updates the Eh Team on the Peace Bus, Canada’s unique national program. Participants ride a bus across Canada stopping along the way to do service and to learn more about the country they live in.
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• The Junior Risk Manager (JRM)— In addition to sitting on the Eh Team, the JRM also
sits on the adult risk management committee. The JRM, with the Junior Risk Management Committee ensure that risk management policies are being followed and that JBers are being educated about them.
The Committees Committees in Canada are especially different from the ones we have in the US. They are made up of representatives from the local JB Boards of each chapter. For example, every JB chapter in Canada has a local development coordinator who is a member of the junior branch development committee.
• The Junior Branch Development Committee — Chaired by the two DCCs, the
development committee creates and maintains innovative projects to better JB Canada.
• The Junior Risk Management Committee — Chaired by the National Junior Risk
Manager, the risk management committee evaluates activities in each chapter for risk, as well as educates JB members on risk management policies.
And that’s it. Mostly. That wasn’t so bad, was it? In short, JB Canada has one executive committee. The members of this committee have two roles, one is to liaise to a region, the other is one of the roles detailed above. It’s kind of like our NJBoT and NYC combined! “But Daniel!” you cry, “if JB Canada doesn’t have an NYC, then who plans presidents’ training and NJBM?” Good question. The NJRs do. NJBM is exclusively planned by the junior NJR, and the Spring Board Training Forum, JB Canada’s equivalent of our presidents’ training, is planned by the NJRs together with some help from at least one of the DCCs Also, one very important difference to note is that almost every chapter in Canada has a local development coordinator and a local risk manager, so at least two people in almost every chapter serve in some way on a national committee! There is also a Local National Camp Coordinator in each chapter. These coordinators do not form a collective committee, yet. They do, however, help the National Camp Coordinator determine how applicants are selected and they’re in charge of communication between the NCC and their chapter.
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Chapter Updates The National Junior Board Meeting began with a focus on the chapters. I thought that this could serve as an introduction to the chapters of Canada. If you find a chapter facing similar issues you are or would like to do a project together, let me know and I will get you in contact. Each chapter in JB Canada answered, considering last year, 1. What are you proud of ? 2. What are you not proud of ? 3. What did that teach you? 4. What are you most excited about for next year?
Victoria JB Victoria was proud that it successfully completed 5 out of the 8 activities suggested by the NJRs. They also ran a great activity on mental illness and many other original activities. However, JB Victoria’s numbers are dropping, and it has not functional bank account. They had a Mosaic*, but it didn’t work out very well. They are also struggling with becoming less cliquey. It has learned to create a Mosaic committee. JB Victoria is excited about hosting a 14+ minicamp and throwing a big gala for its 50th anniversary.
Vancouver JB Vancouver had a 14+ minicamp for the first time in a while, in addition to having a successful cookie-a-thon. They donated 4000 cookies! Their JB meetings, however, were not regular or frequent, and they did not have a lot of JBers planning their minicamp. They learned to find a permanent location for JB meetings and to make an organized schedule for JB meetings. JB Vancouver is excited because they have been recruiting a lot of new families.
Calgary JB Calgary is proud of its peanut-butter-sandwich-a-thon, and the quality of activities it hosts. Their board is very small, and they are having a hard time filling the positions. They have a small amount of regulars at meetings. They would like to have better communication about board positions and advertise them more. They had elections the weekend after NBM. Let’s hope they went well!
Saskatoon JB Saskatoon is attracting a lot of people from out of town to participate in their activities. They are also hosting a lot of great minicamps—4 a year! However, JB Saskatoon doesn’t host a lot of regular activities because no one ever shows up. The old LJRs are going to university, and the new LJRs are 12 and 14.
London JB London has had an increase of executive members; they feel that they are on the road to recover. However, they feel like they haven’t been putting in that much effort, and activities are often planned at the last minute. Few are participating. They’ve learned that it’s important to come together as a team to plan the best activities possible. JB London is excited because it is going to be having a Mosaic with the epilepsy center.
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Waterloo JB Waterloo had 14 or 15 activities, a lot of much were overnight activities despite site problems. Despite this, they feel that JB exec. initiative has dropped. They’ve learned that they need more training sessions, and to post more reminders. JB Waterloo is excited to be doing a Mosaic—a fair for mental illness and disabilities in the community; they will be working with children with autism.
Toronto JB Toronto had a great minicamp. They had a full registration of 60 kids, and got a lot of compliments from kids and adults. They said that there were a lot of cliques in the JB but the minicamp seemed to fix that. They were not so proud of attendance at executive meetings. They may implement an attendance policy for executive members and are planning to run their first Mosaic.
Ottawa JB Ottawa has a huge executive board. They have 30 members in their JB, and 18 of them are exec members. They are also very self-sufficient. They have their own bank account and never use funding from the adults. Also, sometimes the adults will ask them for help. They also just updated their board structure and created a succession plan. They were disappointed that they weren’t able to run winter camp, one of the most popular minicamps in Canada, because of a booking problem. They are excited for next year because they feel that their Mosaic involvement is improving and activities are going to be more creative.
Montréal JB Montréal is gaining more JB members. They have a meeting every Monday night, and this has resulted in a lot of bonding between JB members. JB Montréal is disappointed because winter camp did not work out. They learned to book sites earlier, and they would like to work more on organization and structure. JB Montréal is excited to be doing presentations about CISV in schools and to be working on a cool poster.
Halifax JB Halifax had its first regional minicamp with JB Fredericton, and had a high number of participants (36). They feel that they haven’t communicated well about meetings, and are learning to plan things farther in advance. JB Halifax is excited about an international camp with Fredericton and Maine, and group caroling.
Fredericton JB Fredericton has felt that it has really improved its minicamp this year, and they booked a room for meetings. Younger kids are stepping up into leadership positions. They are excited for an international minicamp with Halifax and Maine. *Many people used the word Mosaic freely. Think of these as service projects, not as official Mosaic programs.
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National Camp & Peace Bus National Camp and Peace Bus are two events that separate JB Canada from the US, and from the rest of the world. These creative national programs help to define JB Canada and can provide inspiration for JB USA.
National Camp National Camp is like our National Mini-Camp without the mini. It’s a eight-day camp in August for participants across the nation. While there is a staff (our very own Rachel was on it last year!), most of the content is planned by the participants. The camp is planned by the National Camp Coordinator with help from the Local National Camp Coordinators from each chapter.
Peace Bus The Peace Bus is literally a peace bus full of JBers that travels across Canada. Each year, the van takes two 39-day journeys, East-bound and West-bound, across Canada. The van holds twelve participants, one junior leader, and two adult leaders. For over a month, “the group volunteers in communities, visits local CISV chapters, engages in educational projects, participates in team building activities and learns about Canada, all while lodging at CISV family homes and camping in breathtaking national parks” (c2cpeacebus.org).
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What we did at NJBM Canada’s National Junior Board Meeting is more of a, well, board meeting, than the NJBM in the US. It’s a place where the LJRs (another word for JB Presidents) and other representatives from each chapter sit around a table to discuss what’s going on in JB Canada, and receive concrete, direct training. It’s also quite a bit smaller, a major reason for the difference. This was Canada’s biggest NBM ever with about 40 participants. It is planned almost entirely by the Junior NJR, who, this year, was Mercedes Fogarassy. For a more detailed report of what went down, check out the minutes here.
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Sessions 1-5: INTROS AND AGENDA The first night of NJBM served as a quick introduction to the chapters of Canada and the candidates running for positions as well as an overview of the rules and agenda for the weekend. I have detailed the introductions the chapters gave on page 7, and did not feel that there was any other relevant information in these sessions. I also omitted a few other sessions because they were either closed sessions or would not provide value to this report.
Sessions 6 and 7: TOWN HALL This is a really cool thing that JBers from Canada really enjoy, and something that JB USA doesn’t have. There is a list to which anyone can contribute a topic. The person who wrote the topic introduces it to the group. Participants discuss the topic following a speakers list (if a person wants to talk, they raise their hand throughout the discussion and are added to a list. People take turns speaking in order of this list). It’s a great opportunity to give JBers the chance to bring up the issues they care about and discuss it in a meaningful way. These are the things we talked about:
“Gender” on forms We had a conversation about the sex designation on the Canadian YLIF. In order to make it more inclusive it was suggested that this be changed to “gender:” and be fillable. We talked about the implications of this, how how to make JB Canada more inclusive, and our LGBTQ community more comfortable.
Sleeping arrangements We talked about and clarified the rules surrounding sleeping arrangements for minicamps. Specifically we discussed how to deal with participants who are over 18 and kids under 18 who are in roles of guidance.
Activity Planning One JB chapter in Canada is having trouble coming up with original activities. They actually made a rule that they were not allowed to run an activity that they have done in the last year! We talked about good strategies to plan exciting and educational activities.
Exec Initiative/Motivation-training We talked about how to motivate exec (JB Board) members who were not taking initiative even after the LJRs set clear tasks and deadlines. The suggestions included having local trainings, and communicating expectations.
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Session 8:
CISV INTERNATIONAL + PROJECTS
Just like we had a presentation about the international Junior Branch and international projects during our NJBM, Mercedes, one of Canada’s NJRs, explained all the cool opportunities JBers have internationally. We talked about international structure, and some cool international projects, like CO[LO]R[E]S, Branch Out, Monthly Digest, JBpedia, and Con Lupa.
Session 9:
DCC WORKSHOP
In an activity facilitated by the two Development Committee Coordinators, the chapters were split up into regions and had to create a “problem tree.” Each region had to think of a problem within that their region of Canada was particularly affected by and list the root causes, immediate causes, and the related problems that arise because of it. The regions then worked together to create activities focused on recruitment.
Session 10: IJR + AJB TEAM CHECK-IN Similar to what we did at our NJBM, JB Canada had a video call with the IJRs and AJB Team. We asked them some questions, and they had some for us! We learned more about international positions and the people that fill them.
Session 11: MOTIONS In JB Canada, each JB chapter (as represented by the LJRs) as well as certain members of the Eh team vote to approve or reject motions. JB USA used a similar system a few years ago, before moving to the 9 member NJBoT committee we have now. There were 5 motions discussed. 4 of them were edits to the bylaws, or slight changes to positions, all of which passed unanimously. The fifth motion was about how to spend $4000 that JB Canada earned the previous year. Many options were discussed, but no decision was reached, and the motion was tabled. Also, one interesting thing is that, although only the LJRs can vote, JB Canada allows all of NJBM to sit in on the voting process and voice their opinion (keep in mind that their NJBM is less than half the size of ours).
Session 12: WHAT CAN JB GIVE US? At the beginning of this session, we were instructed to think of the career we wanted to have and to find people with a similar career. In those groups we thought about what we get from the Junior Branch that we can apply to that profession, what we learn from that profession that we could apply to the JB, and how involvement in JB can help us reach that career.
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Sessions 13: NJR CANDIDATE WORKSHOP Tarra Joshi, the then candidate for NJR and now Junior NJR, facilitated an activity on conflicts. Based off of the CISV guidebook, Confronting Conflicts: A Toolbox for Understanding and Managing Conflicts, her activity showed us that conflicts are not always negative. We talked about awareness, communication and openness, facts, feelings, and needs. We also went talked about a few conflicts and whether or not we would hit, run, or stand. Read Confronting Conflicts for more information. It’s a great resource!
Session 14: AWARDS This was a joint session with the adults. JB Canada gave its first ever JBer for Life award to Michelle Gibbs.
Session 15 : STATZ ARE PHUN This was an activity planned by Anjo, our senior IJR, for IJBC 2014. Each of the chapters wrote the chapter’s name on a piece of paper. We created a giant graph on the floor, using the chapters as data points. We looked at, among other things, the relationship between retention and educational activities, by setting the “degree the JB is focused on educational activities” on the x-axis, and the “degree of your JB’s satisfaction with retention” on the yaxis (there seemed to be a pretty strong correlation).
Session 16: INKING TOGETHER Don’t worry, you’re not going crazy, that name sounds familiar because this is an activity that the NYC planned for JB USA’s 2014 NJBM. To give you a quick summary, each chapter is stranded on one, giant, isolated island. The chapters have to work to find a way off the island at first individually, then as a region, and then all together as a nation. One interesting difference I noted is that, while in JB USA’s NJBM a few people stood up and gave speeches and the crowd agreed on one of them, Canada had a longer discussion during which many more people were heard from and shared their opinion. To be fair, I think this was largely because of the group size and setting—in the US, everyone was clumped together on the floor with not a lot of space and in Canada everyone was seated in a circle.
Session 17: WAKE UP SLOW + CHECK-IN I took a short break from NJBM to go to NBM to get a brief sense of how the adults in Canada run their meetings, and missed this session.
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Session 18: NJR Q&A Just like for the election of our NJR, JB Canada has a formal Q&A session facilitated by the current Junior NJR. There was only one candidate this year, Tarra Joshi, who answered the questions really well. If you want to read her answers, they are in the minutes.
Session 19: JB REPORT This was something that was really interesting to me. In both the US and Canada we have JB Reports. In essence, they’re the same thing. The NJRs get in front of the entire conference and talk about what the JB has been doing for the past year. In the US, maybe because we have a JBer on the Board of Directors, this report serves as an informative presentation to summarize the year to the adults and the JB. In Canada, the tone was more pointed towards advocacy. It seemed more of a struggle to demonstrate that the JB was meaningful to an audience that was tired of donating money to the side project. Maybe that’s harsh—I don’t mean to say that all the adults in JB Canada, or even the majority are unreceptive to the importance and impact of JB. But there were a few, like there probably are in every national association, and apparently those few had enough say that Amy and Mercedes felt like they needed to prove themselves to the organization. I don’t want to make it seem like the entire report was a lecture on the importance of JB, but the intention of it, at least to me, seemed clear—to establish the legitimacy of JB Canada. This is not a struggle that’s absent in the US, and sometimes the number one challenge local JBs face. It’s made me think a lot over these past few weeks about what JB is and how we communicate it.
Session 20: BRANCH OUT Branch Out is the International Junior Branch Project on Diversity for 2014. Every year an international group of JBers make 6 awesome educational activities about the content area of the year. We did Step 2: Blooming, with the adults. It’s an activity that explores the diversity of age. We had some really great discussions!
Session 21: TOWN HALL Another Town Hall! This time we talked about…
Regional Liaisons Regions in Canada is a very young concept. There are 5 regions in Canada, just like the US. 4 of them have two chapters and 1 has three. Mostly we talked about how regional liaisons didn’t work so well last year. We also talked about improving communication, possible regional projects, and the role of regional liaisons. It’s looking like they will work a lot better this year!
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National Merchandise JB Canada tried having national merchandise in the past, but it wasn’t very well received because people thought that it took money from chapters. This year they’re doing something really interesting—national made a really cool design and sent the design to each chapter to print at their discretion. We also talked about the positives and negatives of making an online shop where any chapter could sell their merchandise to the rest of the country.
Fixing Cliques We talked about some of the problems local chapters are having with cliques, especially among age groups. Among the suggestions to avoid cliques were to pre-divide cabins during overnight events, have the older kids lead activities for the younger kids during free time, and make sure that the exec team is inclusive.
Session 22: MOSAIC We learned about what makes a program a mosaic, and what mosaic’s goals are. To learn more, go to the mosaic website: http://mosaic.cisv.org/what/
Session 23: SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY In Canada, they created an additional Canada-wide social media policy which went into a little more detail than the international social media guideline. This was a joint session with the adults during which we sat down and listened to a presentation about the specifics of the policy and had the chance to ask questions. It was then voted upon and approved.
Session 24: BUDGET (I’ve written this section a few times. The first few ended up being rants about why JB Canada has its own bank account and why JB USA does not. I don’t think this is the right place to talk about that, but it’s still a discussion that definitely needs to happen and a topic I feel that JB USA needs to know. If you want to hear my rant about it, didn’t know that JB USA doesn’t have its own bank account, or want to let me know what you think, please reach out to me on Facebook or at daniel.krajnak@us.cisv.org) In Canada, the budget has to be approved by the LJRs from every chapter. There budget is quite a bit more complicated—it’s very impressive— than ours because they have their own bank account. JB Canada’s budget is about half of ours at $12,000, which is fitting because we are just about twice as large. Like the US, most of their money is spent on travel. Let me know if you want to see JB Canada’s or JB USA’s budget for 2015.
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Session 25: MOTIONS Motions again! We continued where we left off with the motion about how to spend the $4000 JB Canada made in profits. Eventually it was decided that we did not have enough time to adequately consider all of the options, so the money was voted to be untouched to gain interest for the coming year. The next motion was to approve the budget. It passed. The next and final motion is an interesting one. It is to change YLIF form Canada uses for its national programs. In order to be more inclusive, the motion suggested that word “sex” should be switched to “gender” and that the options for male and female be switched to a fillable line. The motion passed. However, the JB probably does not have the power to change this, and if so, the motion serves as more of a petition.
Session 26: ELECTIONS Although JB Canada allows all of NJBM to be present during the voting on motions, it does not allow for JBers to be present during elections. It was a closed session, during which the members of the “Eh” team were elected, including the NJR.
Sessions 27: HOCKEY POOL If you’ve been to the football pool at NBM in the United States, CISV Canada’s hockey pool would shock you. Let me explain first, the hockey pool is how CISV Canada decides which chapter gets which invitations to summer programs. There is a predetermined order in which the chapters choose. This order is determined by how often the chapters host programs. In the United States, this process, which we call the football pool, is very formal; it works like a clock. There’s an intensity you feel as soon as you walk into the room. It’s not friendly, but it’s extremely exciting. The hockey pool is much more amiable. Some chapters took their time, or made a mistake and laughed it off. It was casual, but not to point to where it seemed like the decisions didn’t matter. Although, coming from the United States, it did feel like it wasn’t final, like this was just the rehearsal, and the real one, full of gravitas and permeated by an imaginary loud-ticking second hand, would be the next day. I’m not sure which one I like better.
Sessions 28: REGIONAL LIAISON MEET + GREET We went over the elections, and then each of the regions were given time to meet with their new regional liaison—some members of the Eh team also function as regional liaisons.
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Sessions 29: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN… WE DON’T
BRING INFO BACK TO OUR CHAPTERS? For this activity, each chapter drew a picture of a suitcase and listed everything they learned and wanted to bring back to their JB in the suitcase. They also picked a date when they would present what they learned to their JBs.
Session 30: NJBM WRAP-UP! This was the evaluation. In their regions, JBers were asked to answer questions like, “what was the best session? what was the worst? what did you get out of it? what could be improved?” That was it. NJBM’s over. Even though it took 6 pages to describe after omitting a lot of details, it went by really fast. I hope that this has given you an appreciation for the different culture that surrounds Canada’s NJBM, and in doing so, has hopefully given you a better appreciation for our own. If you have any questions, I’m always available and eager to answer them. You can reach me on Facebook (Daniel Krajnak) or at daniel.krajnak@us.cisv.org.
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Essay and Conclusion At 17 pages, and roughly 5,000 words, I didn’t think this report was long enough, so I wrote an essay on JB Adult relations and summarized my thoughts into a conclusion. (I blame late-night caffeine).
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The following is an essay based on thoughts I had during Canada’s NJBM.
JB Adult Relations “I am a driving force in CISV.” as she said it, the room awoke again with quiet, unsure shuffles and awkward chatter. People turned sideways to narrowly squeeze through gaps in the crowd as they tried to assemble themselves by the paper on which was written the age group they thought most fit this sentence. As the room split between “adult” and “adolescent,” I stood still partly because I was interested to see what other people would choose. As a representative of the Junior Branch I felt myself compelled to join the adolescent group, but before impulsively making my way there, I thought it was necessary to at least briefly wonder if it was really the right choice. Are adolescents really the driving force of the organization? I mean, sure, they are the participants in almost all of CISV’s summer programs, and the huge majority of leaders in JB. CISV is a self-proclaimed youth-education organization and must be oriented towards youth and towards adolescents. They are its heart, its voice, its passionate center, but are they its driving force? I wasn’t sure. It’s very obvious that adults put in a huge amount of time and effort to make CISV tick. Without the dedication of a huge network of adults, CISV would not be what it is, or anything at all. We should be incredibly thankful for everything that they do, and the great experiences they have in some way helped create for us (not that we’re the only ones having great experiences). Adults are, without a doubt, a driving force of CISV. However, JB has become inextricably wound into CISV as a critical part of the organization, and safe to say, youth and adolescents are the driving force of JB. JB has become, in addition to being a global movement, an expression of CISV at the local level and an important part of a successful chapter. In almost all cases, a strong JB means a strong chapter. JBers are, without a doubt, a driving force of CISV. So, you see my dilemma. The trouble is that not everyone always sees this dilemma; we don’t always consider the other side of the organization as an important driving force. I think there’s a few reasons why: 1.
What JB does and the value it gives to the organization (and to the world) is not universally defined, and hard to communicate. 2. The adults do a lot of the important logistical stuff, and can easily slip into the mindset that what the JB does is the extra, kid stuff that in the end isn’t really all that important. 3. There is no clearly defined way CISV and JB should interact, or how local JB boards and local adult boards should work together.
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How can we make this better? Well, we can start by clarifying the ideal relationship between a JB board and adult chapter. We can also better define how JB and CISV should work for each other, and the value of each for the other. (Just to let you know, there may be a project in the works on the national level to help JB USA and CISV USA communicate more effectively, and work better together. I don’t want to tell you too much yet, as it’s still being planned, but if you think you’d be interested in working on this issue on a national level, let me know and I’ll give you more information.) The groups solidified on each end of the room. Considering the composition of each group, the prompt might as well been, “stand by the group you most identify with.” As for me, I stood with the adolescent crowd, but I tried to, as much as I could, stay within an arm’s reach of the adults.
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Conclusion I’ve been writing this report for a while now, defying the procrastinator in me by working on it little by little each day. It’s resulted in a long, tedious, and overdue task, but hopefully a more detailed and helpful tool. I have three conclusions I’d like to mention:
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Town halls are a great method of discussing topics , and may be beneficial to JB USA. At the Canadian NJBM, there were two town halls which began with participants adding topics they wanted to discuss to a list. Some of the topics were activity planning, recruitment/retention, LGBT inclusion, and national merchandise. The person who added the topic to the list introduces it to the group and then everyone at the meeting is able to voice their opinions and to help decide how to handle an issue, develop an idea, or offer advise from his or her own experience. I think that it would be very beneficial to include town halls as a part of our NJBM, and/or electronically throughout the year.
2 JB Canada’s structure of one national executive team and national committees with local representation allows for a lot of national-local collaboration. The opportunities in terms of communication Canada has highlights the problems with our own structure, most notably that there is almost no communication between national and local JBs outside of the presidents. While it’s not a good idea to change our structure now, we can learn an important lesson about what we as a JB need to work on. In Canada, this communication helps give local chapters support, encourages innovation on the national level, and creates a sense of national unity. There may be ways we can have more local to national contact without changing our central structure, and this contact is important for support, innovation, and unification.
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3 Compared to the Canadian NJBM, our National Junior Board Meeting seems more like an informative minicamp. Instead of discussing issues and providing direct training, we have educational activities which are aimed at sparking conversations we believe are meaningful for JB USA. I think that the reason for our different approaches to NJBM are because of a difference in size. With over two times the amount of people, it would be difficult to facilitate the kinds of discussions and activities that were prevalent in Canada. Nonetheless, it begs the question: where and when are we having these kinds of discussions? If our national junior board meeting is an informative minicamp, when is our board meeting? I had to answer this question while I was there— I think it’s year-round, during online meetings between the NJRs and our national committees, as well as winter and summer planning and chapter development weekend. I want to be clear, there is value in our national junior board meeting as it stands. Our informative minicamp model I think was the perfect adaptation to the change in our national structure and to our growing numbers. It allows people to get a sense of JB USA on the national level and participate in engaging activities and discussions after which they leave knowing more about CISV and JB USA and hopefully with a desire to get more involved in JB leadership. This of course, has to be supplemented with continuing communication throughout the year, and this communication should be a dialogue not a monologue. We have to provide ways to receive feedback and make sure that local JBers have a say in what goes on nationally, and feel connected to it. Compared to Canada, our NJBM is more of an informative minicamp. Then, because of much of our business occurs year-round outside of NJBM, it’s important that we communicate what we are doing and provide ways that local JBers can have a say in national happenings.
Bonus: Bank Account Thoughts JB Canada has its own bank account, but its a lot of work. This year, the NJRs did a self audit of their budget, and it took a lot of their time and effort for the latter part of the year. Our budget is about twice as big, mostly because we have more two times the amount of national positions, and while it would take a considerable amount of work and valuable time to manage, our own bank
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account could provide the JB with financial autonomy. Here’s the thing though—there’s not much that we could do with our own bank account that we could not do now. Superficially, there is not much necessity for it. We could keep trucking along, and do just fine without one. A while ago I would have argued that the biggest benefit of this financial autonomy would be a greater independence in how JB USA decides to spend its money. There would be less oversight from adults, and JB USA would be able to spend money on what it feels will better itself. Now I think I would have been wrong. In my short time as NJR so far, I have learned how important the relationship between JB and CISV USA is, how much we rely on each other and benefit from each other. How JB should interact with CISV is an important puzzle for the success of our organization. The biggest benefit to getting our own bank account, paradoxically would be to better develop our relationship with the adults, not to distance ourselves from them. Having our own bank account might give us some credibility as our own entity and designate JB USA not as a side project of CISV USA but as an equal and parallel organization. The idea that JB is secondary to CISV is toxic to our success as an organization. While we know that we are not the child in the relationship—there’s isn’t one—some people are convinced that JB is just playtime. Maybe it’s time to get off our parents’ account, not for any practical reason, but simply because it is the next step of growing up.
Wow. That was 7,000 words. And you read all of it, unless you skipped to this part, in which case I’m not as proud of you. Thank you. Thank you for putting so much time and effort to read what I put so much effort into writing. I don’t want this to be the end of our conversation. Please, please, please, if you are interested, email me or come up and talk to me at a national event even if it’s to point out how many grammatical mistakes I made. I really honestly want to talk to you about this. Hopefully it’s been engaging enough to give you a few questions.
— Daniel | daniel.krajnak@us.cisv.org
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I’d like to thank CISV Canada for inviting me to what was a great learning experience as well as a ton of fun. We have a lot to learn from each other, and I hope that we continue this important and valuable tradition of neighborhood cooperation. Special Thanks to Mercedes, Amy, Tarra, Zach, Carlo, and JB Canada for making me feel so welcome and appreciated.
CISV USA. February, 2015