My start in the ERC with travelling to South Korea, Seoul

Annika Foltin

Since October 2013 I am on the new European Regional Committee(ERC), which was elected at the European Regional Assembly (ERA) in St. Gilgen, Austria. I am the new events coordinator for Theology, Culture and Higher Education. Only two weeks later I was asked to step in for our Executive Committee (ExCo) member Vera Papp to travel to Seoul to the WSCF Global ExCo meeting. Only 32 hours after having booked the flights I started my journey to Seoul.

The ExCo meeting was held in a small village located outside Seoul. The Korean Student Christian Federation (KSCF) hosted us for a full week in their small but cosy house before most of the ExCo members were going to the World Council of Churches(WCC) conference in Busan. The ExCo meeting comprises of two ExCo members from each WSCF Region (Asia-Pacific, Latin-America, NorthAmerica, Africa, Middle East, and Europe), the officers (chair, two vice chairs, and the treasurer), the Regional Secretaries, and the General Co-Secretary.

Executive Committee members with the participants of the Peace Symposium participants.

During this meeting we mainly discussed and planed the upcoming General Assembly (GA) in Colombia in August 2014. The GA is the most important WSCF meeting on the global level of WSCF. There decisions about the future of the Federation are made. The new officers will be elected for the next period. Also the new ExCo members from the regions will be elected during the Assembly, as well as there will be the new Co-Secretary introduced. Each national SCM in the world can send one delegate to the Assembly, so students from all over the world will come together and discuss and form the future of WSCF.

We developed a topic and theme for the GA, “We are many, we are one. Affirming Identities, uplifting diversity, sent to build God's Peace”, as it will not only be an assembly but also a conference. Furthermore it was decided that before the GA we will have a women and men pre-assembly to make participants confident for the upcoming days. The pre-assembly will be separated by gender. We think that it is especiallyfor the women very important to make them feel comfortable to speak in the front and raise their voices. The procedures of speaking and the overall process will be explained. The participants of both preassemblies will be prepared for the upcoming days in order to make the outcome of the assembly as successful as possible.

Our days in Korea were long and the nights were short. Often we set until midnight or longer to work and discuss together. The end of our ExCo meeting was overlapping with the Peace Symposium of the Asia-Pacific Region which was held in a neighbour town. We were kindly invited to join them for the opening worship and the excursion day to the Demilitarized Zone.

For me it was such a great experience to get to know the global level of WSCF. I met people from all over the world and got to know different cultures. As I have never been at an ExCo meeting before I didn’t know what was expected of me. Also I was unfamiliar with some work of

My start in the ERC with travelling to South Korea, Seoul. Anika