Anna EJB Team 2020-2022 Candidate Q&A

Anna Conradi (AUT)

The EJB Goals are defined by the EJB Team every year, but NJRs often feel disconnected from them. How would you promote a cohesive development of the EMEA region?

I think there have been good steps made in this direction this year, when the ejbTeam gave NJRs the possibility to contribute to deciding the EJB Goals by answering a questionnaire and giving input/feedback. I think for this development to continue, more and diverse opportunities for NJRs to get involved in the process of setting up and interacting with the EJB Goals have to be tried out. A first step could be to not just announce possibilities of feedback in Neighborhood meetings, but to maybe have an actual designated space to discuss EJB goals in every NH/as a region, making NJRs engage with the different possible goals and reflecting on how much these goals fit their JBs and their view of what we need to work on as EMEA. Another thing I think is important, is that we not only discuss the goals as we set them, but keep bringing them up throughout the years, so they’re not only relevant as we set them and as we are at EJBM – that’s been my experience as NJR, at least.

I also think the development of a cohesive EMEA region is a much broader topic, of which the EJB goals are only one aspect. I believe we have to work a lot on our EMEA community. I’ve recently learned we can be seen as a quite hostile region from within and from the outside. We should examine where this comes from, and how we can tackle that. I also think we have to put a big focus on examining who we include and who we exclude in our region, through aspects like language, accessibility and group dynamics. I believe it might be hard to act on this in a 2-year term, since I believe we first have to identify what it is exactly, that needs improvement, and how we could work on that – which might take longer than one term. If I am elected, I would like to work on examining EJB as a community, looking to abolish exclusionary dynamics and strengthening and coming up with empowering dynamics.

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How would you promote further integration between BEAM and EJBM?

I think to answer this question my first thought would be to ask – why just EJBM and BEAM? Why are we only talking about the meetings, not the whole region?

But yeah. Let’s start where we are.

So, I think to develop into a direction of further integration, we first have to find out what the two main players (participants at EJBM and participants at BEAM) are actually hoping to gain from this, would be interested in knowing, and what sorts of cooperation they could imagine.

I think it is wonderful that our meetings are happening simultaneously, but so far, we just haven’t really managed to grow a lot of the potential coming from that. I would guess, that one of the reasons why that hasn’t happened more, is because we don’t really know where we want to go from here. I would be super interested in learning what other people think could come from that–what kind of EJBEAM utopias we can imagine in this aspect–so we can make a strategy for our next EJBEAMs. Then we can think about who needs to be a facilitator to this further integration – will it be the EJBTeam and the ReCos? Will it be a working group? Will it be the facilitators/content leads of BEAM and EJBM? Through this step we could maybe also take it further than “just the Meetings”–but yeah, again–let’s cross that bridge when we get there.

I don’t have a very strong vision myself, of what it is further integration between EJBM and BEAM should mean, which I think would actually help in promoting it. If I were an EJBTeam member, I wouldn’t think it is my responsibility to decide on the direction of this process, but instead to facilitate and support it, so it can be nourished by the main actors – the participants of EJBEAM or maybe even all of EMEA.

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What should be some lessons that EJB learns from this current crisis and how do you see EJB evolving from now on?

I think first and foremost we need to change how we talk about “this current crisis”. EJBM has really shown me, that (as a JB region) we’re not in a crisis at all. The pandemic that is going on has forced us to do to things differently – and it worked great (in my opinion).

I think it’s too early to take a more specific lesson than “we’ll need to work on our virtual presence” away from it. I see a lot of opportunities to evolve from here and things we could put a focus on, so I’ll explain two major thoughts I’m having: On our virtual community & content delivering: Most obviously, we need to work on and develop our virtual community and content delivering as a region. EJBM has shown a lot of great advantages of doing stuff online, so I believe it’s important for us to look into how virtual & in-person meetings can complement each other. While we can’t meet in person anyway, I’d say we should put a lot of effort/energy into developing and finding virtual methods, so as soon as we can meet in person again, we can work on how to complement and simultaneously use these methods.

I would personally be very excited to work on this, but I definitely believe it should not only be the EJBTeam executing and leading this process. I think we should learn from EJBM that all different kinds of JBers could benefit from these methods and it should be a focus to include diverse perspectives in developing these methods so we can actually have an outcome that will be as useful and accessible as possible.

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What should be some lessons that EJB learns from this current crisis and how do you see EJB evolving from now on? (cont.)

On the content we deliver: I also think that with “this current crisis” we should be looking at the content we deliver and the topics we discuss as a region. I think a best practice example in this regard was to kick off EJBM 2020 with a content session on global inequalities existing & changing with the current pandemic. I loved that in a way, this was a very clear statement on how we were going to talk about “this current crisis”: yes, we can’t meet in person and that’s super sad. Also though, come on, how bad do we really have it?

To be critical and careful with the content we deliver is something that should always be a priority in my eyes. JB is a part of CISV and so our mission is to educate and inspire action for a more just and peaceful world. With what’s going on at the moment globally, I would interpret this to mean that we should try our best to spread awareness of how already existing inequalities are being exacerbated through this pandemic. The first session of EJBM was a wonderful start to that in my opinion.

To summarize, I would love to see EJB come out of this pandemic more aware and more accessible.

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