CISV Atlanta Newsletter – Fall 2005
Surrounded by friends and making new ones while conducting the business of Children’s International Summer Villages USA was the atmosphere of this, and any other National Board Meeting. On October 27, 2005, twelve of our very own steering committee members made the trip by van, truck, and airplane to Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky (a.k.a. Cincinnati). Four of us attended the 2nd Annual National Adult Meeting (NAM), five of us, including our Youth Chaperone (thanks Garry Banning), attended the Youth Board Meeting, one of us attended the brand-new Local Leadership Training Workshop, and two of us attended the Adult Board Meeting.
During the Adult Board Meeting, we as a National Association (NA) set out and completed the ambitious directive of CISV International to set a 10-year plan for hosting. This means that each chapter came with their own 10-year hosting plan for our Village, Seminar, International Youth Meeting, Summer Camp, and International People’s Project (IPP) programs. We listed all of our respective plans and adjusted them accordingly so that we would have a steady flow of programs hosted by US chapters in the years to come. This all came from years of having twelve villages one year and then only three the next.
Each chapter was flexible in making our overall 10-year hosting plan a success. There is always room for change and flexibility in our plan, but the effort was phenomenal and that was just the first session.
We came away from this year’s NBM with our very own Melissa Ribeiro as the new National Summer Camp Chair, with Bill Howe, Hilary Leland, and myself on the NAM committee for next year, with our Junior Branch (Laura Aday, Tim Banning, Kaitlyn Banning, and Maayan Schechter) creating future programs and activities for our youth, with us having met and exceeded our goal of bringing 10 Atlanta Area steering committee members with us to NBM (Anitra Brooks, Thletha Yates, Bill Howe, Kaitlyn Banning, and Maayan Schecther being brand new to NBM), with a plan for the Atlanta Steering Committee to take volunteers from any chapter that is willing to assist our Gulf Coast chapter with clearing debris the weekend of December 9-11, 2005, with the vision of becoming a National Leadership Training center for our USA leaders, with plans for a National People’s Project under the new MOSAIC program (formerly Local Work) to partner with the Boy Scouts of America and the Gulf Coast Chapter in rebuilding a Boy Scout camp used for Gulf Coast chapter villages from Friday, June 30, through Friday, July 14, 2006, and with several invitations for CISV programs this summer.
Sunday’s Football Pool was as exciting as ever. This is where all the program invitations that have been extended to our National Association (CISV USA) from other CISV NAs are listed, and chapters, based on their ranking (based on how recently and how many programs they have hosted), choose the program invitations they would like to accept. CISV Atlanta Area came away with two Villages delegations: one to Quezon City, Philippines and another to Copenhagen, Denmark. We also accepted invitations for a male Junior Counselor to the Village in Denver, Colorado and a male delegate to the Seminar Camp in Finland. This is in conjunction with the Interchange to Graz, Austria (hosting in 2006, sending in 2007) that we accepted for six of our 14-15 year olds. There is much recruiting to do, and the possibilities are endless.
We are currently working with DeKalb County schools to develop a relationship which will hopefully allow us to host Atlanta Area’s first Regional Mini Camp the weekend of June 9-11, 2006 and our first Local Village the week of June 12-17, 2006 at Forrest Hills Elementary. The process has also begun for finding a site at which to host our first International Summer Village in 2008. Our ongoing search for like-minded organizations has again been fruitful once again with our partnership with the Forrest Hills Elementary Community Coalition which has granted us $3,200 to use to fund our Local Village this summer at Forrest Hills Elementary to bring 10-11 year olds from Avondale Elementary, Forrest Hills Elementary, Friends School of Atlanta, International Community School, and Oak Grove Elementary together for peace education, intercultural sharing, friendship, community, and leadership building.
This is the point where we as volunteers become so vitally important to the existence and longevity of CISV Atlanta Area. We will need you and your strengths to help us make all of these wonderful dreams a fact. Find out more about our programs, by talking to officers and committee chairs, visiting our website, and attending our meetings. Sign up to be on a committee, to provide transportation, to ready our sites this summer, to solicit donations, both monetary and in-kind, to do whatever you can to help us provide these wonderful experiences for our local youth and adults. These experiences will be ones they and you will never forget.