My first CISV t-shirt

As you may know, I am a CISV newbie. I have not been involved in the CISV programme before (although I did attend a couple of educational camps run by UNESCO during my teenage years), and as much as I am a parent, my daughter has not been involved in CISV (she did UK National Citizenship Service programmes though), and my son is still too young to attend even a Village. But now, after my first month with CISV International, I got my first CISV t-shirt, and I am starting to slowly understand the importance carrying of the CISV logo means to so many of our volunteers across the planet.

The first month in my new role has been super exciting! I got to collaborate with fellow Arsenal fan and our technology wizz Gatu and worked with our finance guru Israa to get all my HR files in order. Simon from the Administration Team organised an informative onboarding plan, and what initially looked like a meeting with someone called Big Ed, turned out this was a briefing on CISV’s peace education approach, duh. Steffi and Nicky attempted to educate me about the way the points system works – big kudos to them for managing this beast so expertly!

Angie, Stef, and Jaz gave me a super useful overview of CISV’s risk management and safeguarding approach and showed an incredible level of patience, flexibility, and support whilst I tried to complete the various modules on the Safeguarding eLearning.

My fellow new recruit Agus helped me to understand the complexity of CISV’s communication whilst making me super jealous about the ever-changing background he has behind him on our calls. Tanya provided wonderful leadership, guidance and context to many intricacies behind the structure, set-up and relationships within CISV, and even took me out during her visit to London. And all of that even before I was blown away by Carmen’s infectious enthusiasm, Mikaela’s incredible ideas, and Esti’s overwhelming experience, as my great colleagues in the Programmes and Operations Team.

But the main attraction was meeting up with our wonderful CISV volunteers!!

I had the pleasure of talking to many National Representatives about the successes and challenges within their respective Associations, caught up with Member Support Coordinators to speak about the relationships within Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific and Americas regions, got introduced to Governing Board members and made a bold promise to JBers that ‘I will think about Junior Branch all the time and involve them in everything I am doing!’. I also feel that I am just about getting a hang of understanding the main acronyms that are used within CISV too 😊

The highlight though has definitely been being able to attend the BEAM, and that was not only because of the opportunity to catch some warmer Italian weather. Experiencing the energisers, the ‘silent jazz-hands’, the social gatherings, the packed agenda, the communal eating, and the non-stop talking, was quite the thing. However I was most impressed by the quality of conversations, the incredible support and encouragement all participants gave each other when they agreed, and the consideration, constructiveness and respect expressed during disagreements. If this is the result of experiences, development and education provided during your involvement in CISV programmes, I am positive that this organization is making an incredibly positive impact!!

After my first month at CISV I am more excited than ever about the prospect of supporting you with making the further impact of CISV programmes as great as possible.

My personal priority is to further learn about the organisation and to continue to meet even more of our great volunteers. In the Programmes and Operation Team, we are planning the best way to work with operational committees (Education and Research, Training, Organisational Development, and Verification), setting up short- and long-term work plans, and mapping up relationships between roles and groups within our structure. We want to find a way to be able to engage more volunteers in our work (both at the International and the National level), get better at demonstrating volunteer impact, and volunteer recognition. And most importantly improve how we collaborate and work effectively and efficiently for the benefit of everyone involved.

I am looking forward to the next few months and seeing many of you at the Global Forum – make sure to come over and say ‘Hi’ if you are there. And hopefully I can get myself even more CISV merch there too!!

By Jacob Przeklasa