2016 IJR Candidate Questionnaire - Flora Simon

My name is Flora and I’m one of the IJR candidates this year. I’m 21 years old and I’m from Vitória, a beautiful city in the southeast of Brazil, where I study Architecture & Urbanism.

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One of the reasons that made me accept the nomination for International Junior Representative is that besides all the work, CISV is something very important in my life, mostly because of the great people I get the chance to meet.

In the next pages, you’ll read some of my ideas. I’ll be very happy to talk to you on the upcoming months, so here are some of the ways you can get in touch with me: facebook.com/florasg florasimongurgel@gmail.com flora.s.gurgel

Obviously there are many things that I would learn from, if elected as International Junior Representative, but I am sure some of them will only become evident for me during the term or even after that - and this is also very exciting.

The position of International Junior Representative involves different responsibilities, and this experience would directly contribute to my formation as individual (both personally and professionally). Some of the skills and knowledge I expect to improve as IJR are: Organizing my duties: With a bunch of tasks I would have as both IJR and architecture student, I expect to improve the way I organize my duties in my daily life, having a well-balanced weekly schedule.

Working with different people: The great multicultural environment in CISV allows us to always meet people who have different backgrounds and diverse ideas. Talking to people at International Meetings, exchanging e-mails with CISVers around the world, coordinating a team with different JBers and working closely with the co-IJR are some of the relations that would bring me great possibilities of learning and self development.

Understand better the impact that the youth can have: With JB Review in progress it is evident that this is a substantial moment for the youth in the organization. Being 100% involved with this process, I expect to understand more about the potential and relevance of our generation, not only within CISV, but in the society.

I’ve always seen the IJRs as a reference for me as JBer. Some very motivated people with a lot of experience in terms of Junior Branch that were there to coordinate an international structure and represent the youth in a global scale. They have an important role when it comes to set priorities and the direction that IJB should take over the years, considering all the differences between the JBs, and, more importantly, our common goals.

But besides that, it is important to analyze what does the role of IJR currently represent to the rest of the organization.

I believe that specially for the next two years - having JB Review as our biggest project - being an IJR will mean to facilitate the discussion on the role of Junior Branch within our organization and be a strong representative of the importance of the youth for CISV, understanding our weaknesses but mostly, our potential. As an International Junior Representative, it will be important to truly understand what do we want to achieve on the upcoming years and what we should be doing right now to reach that.

The structure we have in Junior Branch should work towards the same goal of all the committees, teams and boards we have internationally: to contribute to the development of the Chapters.

In the way we function today, as a self-governing branch of CISV, JB has the possibility of choosing how and what they want to work on, but the reason why we do our activities, projects and events should not be different from the rest of the organization.

In order to align and optimize the efforts of the Regional Junior Branch Teams and IJB Team, we need to set common strategies together every year. If we want our structure to be more closely-knit it is essential that APJB, EJB and AJB teams have a direct contact with each IJB Specialist, coming up together with ideas, solutions and projects about educational content, communication, training and quality assurance, instead of having each of the teams going into different directions on those topics. Regions would continue to have their own particularities, but, that in their different ways, the teams will work reaching the same purposes.

All the work developed in IJB should reach the national and local JBs and make sense to every JBer in our Chapters, otherwise it’s just a lot of time and energy wasted.

Junior Branch is very loved. But also very questioned.

Being involved with Junior Branch for 5 years helped me to understand the importance of it to the youth of CISV. Being involved in my Chapter, which is the smallest Chapter of CISV Brazil; working on the national board for 2 years as NJR; and having the chance to attend and facilitate international meetings made me face the obstacles we have to overcome if we want to improve our participation as a driving force of CISV - one of the main goals of reviewing Junior Branch.

I see the contribution of an IJR as a facilitator of a debriefing. Like facilitators, they need to keep in mind where they want to go. In this case, “to make the youth more connected to the rest of the organization”. With a lot of different points of view, the facilitators have the challenge of getting all of them to reach a conclusion that accomplishes the initial goal, but also considers all of the perspectives that helped to build it up.

Changing can be scary, but it’s an important part of the process.

Personally, I believe that there are plenty of spots for changes in CISV, and that includes the role of the youth. But I won’t be satisfied if I feel that the proposals don’t come in a way to also preserve the best things we have in Junior Branch: the innovative spirit, the educational approach and the diversity of possibilities.

These projects were the biggest contribution that IJB gave to CISV during the last four years, because they actually reached the Chapters. Having readyto-run activities being released every two months encourages many JBs to explore Educational Content. Also, all the social media promotion put in evidence the feeling of a Global Movement, which was also something important to make these projects successful.

Although Dig In is not finished until the end of the year, we need to start thinking about the next project we will have for Educational Content in 2017. These projects are great and the activities are really well-planned but they have some limits since they are planned internationally (back to 2014, developing Branch Out, we realized that we couldn’t go too deep into a specific topic that couldn’t make sense for some countries or regions to explore). As a next step, and also to continue contributing to the organization in terms of the approach on the content areas, IJB should come up with a project that encourages the local/national JBs to develop their own educational activities over the year, focusing in more specific and local issues.

The innovative spirit is one of our best characteristics as youth and this reflects on the activities and projects we plan, no matter if it is locally, nationally or internationally.

Having so many JBers around the world running educational activities and projects, there is no doubt that we contribute to achieve CISV’s mission.

We are constantly discussing the purpose of the organization and I believe this makes us challenge our methods and themes all the time.

To improve what we do, our structure should allow us to make more and more consistent educational activities and projects that will have an impact on both their planners and participants.

It all started when I was 13 years old and my parents thought that it would be a good idea to find something for me to get involved with.

When we went to the first meeting to get to know CISV, I was invited to go to a national camp that would happen more or less 2 months later. I dove right in and it was an amazing experience. I enjoyed all the activities and mostly, the friends that I made.

When I got back to school, I realized that the camp environment wouldn’t be that easy to have in any other place. I tried to introduce some energizers to my friends, but they were not that excited as I was singing and dancing the Poney Song. They also were not that interested in discussing Sustainable Development and how the “Family of the Future” (which was the theme of the camp) should be in order to make the world a more sustainable place.

Two years later, when I was 15, I went to a JB training and started to get involved with Junior Branch. I couldn’t imagine that those 2 days would be such a life-changing experience. After that, I’ve been always involved in a Junior Branch project.

It’s very hard to describe what CISV means to me and how it contributes to my life, because I just don’t remember not being involved with this organization. I am not sure where CISV is going to take me in the future, but I am very excited for it!