Lexi IJR 2020-2022 Candidate Q&A

IJR Questionnaire Alexandra Pachlinger Contact me at: alexandra.pachlinger@cisv.at or find me on facebook or instagram (alexandrapachlinger)

Introduce yourself and tell us about why you are running for the International Junior Representative 2020-2022 position This is me!

I‘m Called Lexi 23 years old living in Vienna (recently had to come back from my year abroad in paris) Currently studying Philosophy - I will start my masters in translaiton and interpreting this fall Being International Junior Representative is something that I have been interested in for a long time now - I have held several different positions in Junior Branch and I am extremely interested in what a new position might bring. I really loved being a participant in CISV camps and also being a leader and staff, but JB is by far my favorite area in CISV. I really love the fact that you get to try out things and come up with whatever you want and it’s okay if it doesn’t work on the first try or ever. It is a space where you can bring up different issues that you see with it and where people are generally very open to actively work on fixing these issues. The JB community is constantly trying to improve itself and that’s something that I would love to support even more. The amount of

I‘m a pretty social person love to have ppl over pretty good host love showing people vienna other hobbies: REading!!! this year I‘ve set a goal to read 30 min each day playing the clarinet bullet journalling

CISV Milestones: started with village in 2008 2013: joined JB 2016: NJR for Austria 2018: EJB-Team

invested and committed people I have met in the past few years is honestly mind-blowing to me and the people I get to work with amaze me on a regular basis.

I think JB can be a place, where people feel like they belong and I would be happy to be a part of making this happen even further.

On a more self-centered note, I think that I would be a good IJR. I have gained a lot of knowledge about JB and CISV over the past few years that I think would be very useful in being IJR. I know that so far for me, everything has mainly taken place in the Europe, Middle-East and Africa (EMEA) region, but I am excited to get to know a different point of view on all of this. I work well with people and enjoy being in an international environment like International Junior Branch – all in all I think that I would be good for the position.

International Junior Representatives support the work of very diverse National Junior Branches.

Propose 3 initiatives to improve the capacity of NJBs to achieve Junior Branch Goals.

Around the International JB World, there’s a lot of National Junior Branches (NJBs) that face very similar struggles, but all of them are dealing with them on their own. From the point of view of international JB, I think the best you can do for NJBs is to give them a good foundation to build their work on, motivation and reassurance.

In this context, I have found two strategies to support NJBs: first, to give them information and a foundation to do their work better and secondly, to take things off their hands that they don’t necessarily need to do.

My first two proposals fall under the strategy “information and foundation”, while my third proposal falls under the strategy “take things off of National Junior Representatives’ (NJRs) hands”

IJB Website standardized trainings for NJRs NJRs get elected and are then introduced to their work by their senior NJRs. There’s a lot of common ground between the work of all NJRs around the IJB world, but there is very little standardized procedure to welcome new NJRs into the JB world and into their work - something I have noticed over the past few years is that junior NJRs really only know as much as their senior tells them. To give all NJRs an equal start into their work, I propose to hold online trainings for new NJRs twice a year, so that no matter when they get elected, they can get training relatively at the start of their term.

This way, NJRs will have a clearer idea of what is expected from them, where to find relevant information and will know the structures around them better and where to turn for the help they might need.

To develop the NJR training curriculum and to run these training, we could create a new role in the international JB structure for people who would like to specifically do this.

In line with this first proposal, I think that the IJB Website could be used even more efficiently as a way to gather all information from/about other platforms in one place. If JBers have a place to go to inform themselves and get all the documents they might need by themselves, this will make everybody’s job easier as well.

There’s a lot of things that are already super nice about the IJB Website, e.g. the contacts section or how easy it is to find documents and activities there. We could build on that and make IJB more transparent and informative through its website.

SAFEguarding At the moment, safeguarding is a huge topic in CISV, in which JB has to take an active role. At the moment, we assume that JB workshops can offer the same kind of risk management standards as other CISV programmes, without any of the staffs and people responsible for them ever having had any risk management training. To tackle this discrepancy, we will first have to examine what is already happening regarding safeguarding in Junior Branch. This should enable us to later start giving trainings to JB Homestaffs. These should cover safeguarding and riskmanagement as well as other topics that may arise. Ideally, it will reduce the risk of things going in an unwanted way and would give less experienced NJBs a chance to host high-quality workshops, which in turn will give more chances for doing bigger projects and hosting more workshops.

From IJB Thinks to the JB Motion, the role of IJR entails a long-term vision on an important Junior Branch need and a plan to execute it.

What is the big project you wish to accomplish in your term?

Something that I have been very passionate about for the past year is the accessibility of JB opportunities.

With the global pandemic, I have had to address this from a completely new angle. Since currently we can’t have in-person meetings, we have all been getting used to delivering online content and meeting virtually. As an EJB Team member, I got to take part in organizing the Europe, Middle-East and Africa Junior Branch Meeting (EJBM) online. We decided to make it feel as much as an actual, in-person EJBM and the results were overwhelmingly positive. I really believe that it is worth doing online content, even when we will be able to meet again in person, because the two could complement each other really well.

In the next two years, I would like to look into different initiatives, activities and trainings that would make sense to be run online in addition to everything that we already do in person. To be able to understand which online content could be run relevantly by IJB, we first have to look at what different JBs already do virtually. This could be used to establish relevant template activities, support material, trainings, and more. I’d be excited to work with all the different people involved in fulfilling such ideas.

Some advantages to doing content online: anyone with a phone/computer and internet connection can join you can join without having to travel you can reach new and even more diverse groups of JBers you can deliver sessions with content focused on needs of specific target groups, e.g. session for LJRs at EJBM Online All three regional JB meetings and the International Junior Branch Conference (IJBC) are happening/ happened online this year and there is a lot of experience that we can take away from this, so in addition to incorporating more online content into our approach as JB, I think it could be empowering to develop a guide to online content from running these four meetings online and learning from all of them. This could again be done by a group of people who would be in charge of focusing specifically on this. In short, I believe that as IJB we have created a momentum that we can turn into empowering and accessible new initiatives.

Please outline the key players at national, regional and international levels of CISV! Please explain how IJB will benefit from collaborating with them, and how you are planning to engage them.

NATIONAL

REGIONAL:

chapter development delivery teams

NARS / NA Boards NJRs / jb Boards

|

In my eyes, NJRs are one of the groups that IJB puts most focus on when it comes to giving support. As long as opportunities and initiatives are relevant and beneficial, I feel like IJB can even widen their reach and support on this level.

As for National Association Representatives (NARs) and NA Boards, I think it is very important to support the exchange between NARs and NJRs, which is more easily done by the regional JB teams, since they usually know both the NJRs and NARs of their region better. I see this exchange happening best at the regional meetings and I think it’s important for the IJRs to take a supportive role at the two simultaneous meetings of NARs/Regional Coordinators/etc. and JBers, to see how they can collaborate, have more contact and be more integrated and involved with each other.

International Gobo / io IJRs / IJBTeam Probably the biggest key player in general is the IJB Team. I know that in the last years there has been a lot of transformation in this area and I would love to continue this work.

Aside from the IJB Team and the IJRs, I see the Governing Board and International Office as the key players on an international level. There already is cooperation in place between the two IJRs and representatives of the Governing Board and IO, but an area that I see a huge chance for cooperation in, is again safeguarding.

CISV International is developing different safeguarding measures for a lot of areas within CISV at the moment, and I see it as a necessity for JB to take an active part of putting into place measures and standards for JB. This will make it possible to hold safer JB events.

REGIONAL TEAMS On a regional level, the regional JB teams are the key players from a JB point of view. In the past, the regional JB teams haven’t had much contact, even though there are more than enough similarities between them and their work and they themselves would profit immensely from more exchange.

Recently, all regional JB teams have been having a monthly call to update each other about their regions, receive information from IJB and to see how they can collaborate more. This is something that I think has a lot of potential we can build upon.

Within the regional structure of CISV, I think the most important part to engage are the Chapter Development Delivery Teams in each region. A big part of being in a regional JB team is to support JBs that are struggling, but members of regional JB Teams usually don’t have much experience with Chapter Development. To support them, it would be nice to put a structure into place that allows more insight from the Chapter Development side. For example, the NAs within EMEA have recently been categorized in Neighborhoods with an NA Advisor each. These NA Advisors can work together with the corresponding Neighborhood (NH) coordinators to support national and local JBs. In summary, I would like to keep working on the relations between the regions, e.g. fostering the exchange of best practices.

According to the Junior Branch Self-Evaluation Tool, most of our local Junior Branch communities are in the developing stage. In your opinion, how could the different IJB Team focus areas support them in their development?

First of all, I think it’s important to note that development implies growth and improving your practices and structures.

On the one hand, I see similar problems as with the NJBs - there’s many things that all JBs do in a similar way or should be doing, which are neither structured cohesevely nor are they even known across NAs. On the other hand, speaking from my experience as an LJR and with LJRs, IJB can be quite intimidating and abstract, so I think we would first have to examine how IJB could connect with local JBs and propose relevant things to them.

That being said, I do have some ideas that could eventually help local Junior Branches in their tasks:

this could be done with the...

Role Profiles Having a clear idea of the tasks that certain roles require makes it easier to be prepared and motivated throughout your term, especially in a diverse role like LJR. In my experience, LJRs often feel overwhelmed in their role and this could be a tool to help with it.

this could be done with the...

Training and quality assurance focus group

CHAPTER DEVELOPMENT OR EVENTS/RESSOURCES focus group

Evaluations Evaluations can be very helpful to improve working together and seeing the impact of the initiatives we’re running. Having an easy to use and accessible evaluation tool could really help LJRs and local committees in fulfilling their tasks and plan new and exciting initiatives.

Activities Ready to run activities are another tool that can really help local JB communities. There are already very nice activities that can be found online, but it is still something that is worth building upon, maybe even in the specific context of local JBs. In Junior Branch, we plan and run many successful activities each year that could be collected and published on the IJB Website as well.

this could be done with the...

Educational programmes focus group