IP Bulletin and IHQ News
From the International President Dear Fellow Members have witnessed a drastic flagship project and we are proud It is my privilege to join you once downtrend. We should work on to partner with the Red Cross and again through this issue of YMW and and seek ways to achieve the 30,000 Red Crescent Societies to save the bring greetings of the season – of the membership level we had once lives of children in Africa and hopeful joy touched recently. elsewhere. This is a major of Christmas w Collaboration between Y’s Men’s community service programme and a happy Clubs and YMCAs has favourably with a budget of CHF 185,000. New Year. produced fruitful results as As a member of Y’s Men Let me witnessed in various parts of the International, I feel blessed to have continue to world. The cooperation witnessed several opportunities, some of which “Count our during the Roundtable at the APAY are mentioned above, to ser ve Blessings” to Quadrennial Meet in Chiangmai, humanity in need and to play the role inspire our Thailand last year and its follow- of servant-leader. Yes, let us count our leaders and up for sharing the message of blessings as we move forward to face members to Y’sdom at the National General another year of challenges, work together into the spirit of “That Secretaries’ Roundtable during opportunities and success. we all may be one” (John 17: 21): February 14-17, 2016 in Chiangmai In conclusion, let us take note of w Extension and Membership is indeed a major breakthrough. what the former Secretary-General of Conservation has been one of our Through this arrangement we get World Alliance of YMCAs shared major efforts in the recent past, to share platforms to be introduced during his biblical reflections at the working in close collaboration with to potential members for Y’s General Assembly of APAY in Korea the Area Presidents, their teams and Men’s/Y’s Service Clubs around last year: ISDs to maintain and to find ways the world. No doubt we must be proud that to grow our membership base. w Humanity is our core value to serve humanity is probing into distant stars However, with the economic society through our community and are able to discover new planets downtrend with its ripple effects in service programmes and through billions of light years away, but here all parts of the world must have our principal partnership with the on earth we are still plagued with so had an impact to our growth too, YMCA. Through the global Time many dire issues, including poverty, for we registered a decline of five of Fast programme we have been hunger and destitution. Our realities percent at the beginning of the able to respond to domestic as well do not match our vision and dreams. current Y’s year. We are heartened as international humanitarian needs While we are ever busy building bigger by the membership growth in in the past. The latest example of a and bigger shopping malls, taller and Canada/Caribbean, Korea and project is “Y’s Men Doctors” as taller skyscrapers, millions of our young South Pacific Areas which have demonstrated by Y’s Men in Korea people and particularly women are registered some growth of late. We Area whose volunteers will serve in struggling to eke out a living; searching record our appreciation to the Cambodia in February 2016. We desperately to find a decent job to live leaderships and at the same time have thus added a new dimension, with dignity. pray for pray for blessings in the that of cross-border service, to our May God bless us all. other Areas, particularly for our outreach efforts. Wichian Boonmapajorn brother and sisters in Africa, which w Roll Back Malaria (RBM) is our International President 2015/16 No 2–2015/16
Mission with FaithThe Official Publication of Y’s Men International
Editor’ ge Editor’ss Pa Page Nº 2 2015/16 Official publication of Y’S MEN INTERNATIONAL Ave Sainte-Clotilde 9, CH-1205, Switzerland Tel: +41 22 809 1530 www.ysmen.org EDITOR Koshy Mathew 222, 7C Main, First Block HRBR Layout Kalyan Nagar, Bengaluru 560 043, India. Tel: +91-9845036147 Skype: Koshy.mathew367 koshym@gmail.com ASSISTANT EDITORS AFRICA Tunji Makinde (Nigeria) +234/8034064882 (M) tunjimakinde@yahoo.com ASIA Yaz Okano (Japan) +81/797881808 (O) +81/797844559 APYazOkano@gmail.com CANADA & CARIBBEAN Bill Irwin (Canada) +1/9025693187 (H) wci0909@hotmail.com EUROPE Liudmila Tyukina (Russia) +7/9122344611 (M) assorti44@yandex.ru INDIA B. Pavithran (Kerala, India) +91/9847220054 (M) pavithbb@yahoo.co.in KOREA Kim Kyun (Seoul) +82/27352395 (O) +82/27321205 ysmenkrhq@gmail.com LATIN AMERICA Ricardo Andre Cardenas Zanabria (Panama) +51/198772474 (M) randre.cardenas@gmail.com SOUTH PACIFIC Bill Schmidt (Australia) +61/344338599 (H) schmidts@bendigodomain.com.au USA Fred L. Leonard (USA) +1/5012623566 (H); +1/5012623566 fleonard@cablelynx.com
Dear esteemed readers, Since the last issue of Y’s Men’s World has been published much has happened in the world around us and in our movement. The messages from the IP and from the ISG reflect some of them, particularly the drop in our global membership. The positive factor is that our leadership is seized of the problem and is doing everything in their power to reverse the trend and approach 2022, our centenary year, on a positive note. This is possible only if each one of us plays our role. “Each one, reach one” is an appropriate strategy to achieve the magical figure of 50K+ strength that our leadership has been striving for in the past decade. Two notable events in the global arena happened in the last quarter of the previous year – one, the end of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) era and the inauguration of the SDG era. From now on, we talk of Sustainable Development Goals and
NEWS IN BRIEF Harry M. Ballantyne Award 2014-15: Highest honour in Y’s Men International, the Harry M.Ballantyne Award, for the year 2014-15 was bestowed upon PIP Benson Wabule. The award and the citation were presented to PIP Benson Wabule by IPIP Isaac on 24 October 2015 at the Africa Area Convention in Obudu, Nigeria. Ms Stephanie Spencer from Jamaica has been appointed to the position of Youth Intern for 2015/16. Ms Spencer has a Bachelor’s Degree in Management Studies with an emphasis in marketing and is a member of the Mandeville Y Service Club. She began working at the International Headquarters in September 2015.
DISTRIBUTION Babu Oommen 56, Royal Meridian Layout, Begur Road Bangalore, 560 068, India. +91/9901199863 (M) :: babuoomen@yahoo.com Reprinted at National Printing Press Koramangala, Bengaluru 560 095, India. ONLY FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION TO MEMBERS
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have set 2030 as a landmark year; the other, we have set our eyes at a possible reduction of global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius at the Paris meeting on climate change. Both these, given the right orientation and thrust, are achievable. But will they be permitted to fructify given the greed that humankind has exhibited of late? An Oxfam Report, titled An Economy for the 1%, released recently, is indeed a shocking one. It shows that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population (3.7 billion) has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010, a drop of 41 percent. Meanwhile, the wealth of the richest 62 persons has increased by more than half a trillion dollars. If this trend continues one percent of the world’s population will own more wealth than the other 99 percent by next year, according to the study. This is alarming and therein lies a challenge for all of us – to work towards reducing the gap and push the agenda of sustainable goals for the development of all. Yours Y’sly, Koshy Mathew
Deadline for submission of articles and pictures for next issue: 15 February 2016 Mission with Faith
FROM THE INTERNA TIONAL INTERNATIONAL SECRETAR ARYY-GENERAL SECRET AR
Time ffor or Transf orming Ourselves! ransforming The first semester of the Y’s Men activity year has gone by quickly and we are now in the second semester of the year 2015/16 under the leadership of IP Wichian Boonmapajorn. Soon after this issue of Y’s Men’s World is released, the Mid-Year Meeting of YMI comprising nine Area PresidentsElect, the IP troika, the International Treasurer and the International Secretary-General will be held in Bangalore, India, to review the past semester and prepare for the goals of 2016/17 under IP Joan Wilson. It is a fact that all service club organizations in the world have been facing a critical time in sustaining or increasing membership in the recent years. I believe it is time to transform ourselves and not keep the status quo in our operations in the organization. In six years’ time, we will be celebrating the hundredth anniversary of our movement. We do not need to be pessimistic at all as our servantleaders exhibit strong passion and sprit to serve the community and people. We are also unique and privileged to have a partner-movement in the YMCA in our Districts,
Regions and Areas which means it is important to share the mission and action together. Leadership at the local levels will also have to work for mutual transformation by taking into account the strengths in each other’s work and outreach and benefitting from that. The International Council that met in Kyoto last year approved a practical budget to support more training programmes and workshops for future leaders and youth by reducing a large part of the cost of maintaining the IHQ and by having a satellite office in Thailand. The International Executive Officers (IP, IPE, IPIP, IT) and the ISG had an extraordinary meeting at the Chiangmai YMCA in December to plan for the implementation of the costeffective backstage office. This set up will start from the summer of 2016 as soon as International Convention in Taipei is over. This does not mean the IHQ will move from Geneva, but it will be downsized to the minimum. The ISG is responsible for both offices with the current team of capable hands. Transformation is required at all Area and Regional levels too to make the movement effective for sustainable future even beyond 2022. Wish you a blessed transformational year! Nishi The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (2 Peter 3:9)
YMI IN OTHER FORUMS
At the Climate Change Meet in Paris Y’s Men International was well represented at COP21 in Paris last December. Three of our leaders joined in the Camp Climate initiative carried out alongside the Conference by the World YMCA and their Resource Group on Environment (RGE). They are Clifford Collins Omondi Okwany from Kenya, Mina Karam Aziz from Egypt and Alvin Kan who is from
Hong Kong. Between them, in the photo below, they are holding a T-shirt that was sold at the APAY General Assembly as a fundraiser for TOF-GPF. Tinna Ros Steinsdottir from the IHQ also attended the Camp as a facilitator. Both Clifford and Alvin are active members of the YMCA-RGE group and had an observer accreditation to the COP21 negotiations as well as working with the youth that attended Camp Climate. The Conference of Parties (COP) has been held annually since 1995 and is based on the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which came into force Mission with Faith
on 21 March 1994. The YMCA has been represented at the Conference for several years and has done great work within the civil society sector, but with over 400 participants from YMCAs from all around the world this time around, this was by far the biggest involvement that the YMCA has had with COP to date. The Paris Agreement was unanimously agreed upon by all member states by the end of COP21, which is a very positive outcome. The Agreement aims to limit global warming to an average of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and pursues efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). COP22 will be held in Marrakech, Morocco, on 7–18 November 2016. Source: YMI FaceBook page 3
At the Briefing on Sustainable Development Goals The other forum that YMI made its presence at is the one on the briefing on the 2030 agenda for sustainable development at the UN Office in Geneva, in late September 2015. It was convened by the DirectorGeneral and chaired by Ms. Amina Mohammed, Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on Post-2015 development planning at the UN. It was a general briefing and did not go into specific area of each goals. It was a good meeting to think about what service is sustainable for our organisation to keep, and to increase our members for service at the local community level, with young people as inevitable human resource to sustain the community and the world.
Nishi (in the pic above), YI Stephanie Spencer and Tinna Ros Steinsdottir attended the briefing on behalf of YMI.
The new set of goals go beyond the health, hunger and education focus of the MDGs and include goals on climate and peace. They are also universal – unlike the MDGs, which focused only on developing countries. Given below is a graphic representation of the Goals and some expert opinions about the main positives of these goals.
One of the strengths of the goals is their comprehensiveness. They’re no longer just about the developing world – as many of the concerns in them – education, health, conservation, and rule of law, are shared across the globe. The authors of the SDGs realized that we can’t combat poverty globally without making states stronger and reducing the likelihood of civil wars, and thus a new focus in goal 16 on building effective and accountable institutions. – Martin Edwards, associate professor and director of the Center for United Nations and Global Governance Studies at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, USA The goals represent an integrated vision for sustainable development taking into consideration the three pillars (economy, society and environment) as well as peace and partnership. Given the historic separation of the development and environment communities, this is an important gain – not just in terms of the types of goals included for each are, but the integration of elements of the three pillars within goal areas. The goals are also the product of inter-governmental negotiations with inputs from citizens, civil society, academia, private sector, local and regional govt, etc. They form an important consensus going forward, even if detractors argue they are not ‘neat enough’ and there are ‘too many.’ Sustainable development is complex. The world we live in is complex. The goals go a long way towards reflecting this reality. – Shannon Kindornay, adjunct research professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
ANNOUNCEMENTS YMCA Global Citizenship Forum: The Fourth YMCA Peace Voyage with Japan Peace Boat will start on 31 March 2016 from Yokohama and sail through Sasebo, Jeju (South Korea) and Hiroshima before returning to Yokohama on 8 April. Y’s Men Asia Area is in partnership with the World YMCA, Asia and Pacific Alliance of YMCAs, Japan YMCA and YMCA Korea in organising this voyage. Log on to www.ymca.int or write to Mr. Jose Varghese, Executive Secretary of the World YMCA at jose@ymca.int for registration and additional information. * * * The 72nd International Convention (IC) of YMI is scheduled to be held in Taipei, Taiwan from 4 to 7 August 2016. The International Youth Convocation (IYC) will start on 1 August and conclude on 7 August. Registrations for both these events have commenced. Details are available on the IHQ website via: http:// www.ic2016.org/ 4
Mission with Faith