Saturday 22 June 2013

Change Agents in Norway

I am here in Norway, we are 4 "change agents" from the UK (3 from England, 1 from Scotland). For those of you who don't know what "change agents" are, we are young people from around the world working on a World Alliance of YMCA programme. This training will help us look at what the change agents are and how we will implement our job description. We have only just started officially today and this training is being delivered at the same time as Norway's Global Week so as well as change agents from across Europe and the Middle East, we have participants from YMCA and YWCA's in Europe, Asia and Africa. It proves to be a very interesting week with plenty of participants to learn from.

We have had a day of the change model and looking at ways we could possibly implement this in our local and national YMCA's, this will be an ongoing theme throughout the week. We have also had a fantastic presentation on the Youth in Action funding and I have many ideas about what I can bring back to my local and national movement, I have to try and find time to organise these ideas and do some research about all of this.

So tonight, we watched a film called "When the boys come home" a documentary about the occupation in Palestine. The film was about the Israeli soldiers arresting boys (all children or minors) for throwing stones and the work that is being done by the YMCA / YWCA to try and support these young boys in very difficult occupation. It was a challenge to me to hear this story as I was not fully aware of this situation. On a personal level, having some awareness about the situation in Israel and Palestine I am very aware that it was partly caused by the British. This violence then felt personal. I very much appreciate the story telling of the participants from Palestine and Jordan.

Well it is late so I will end here. I would recommend looking for this documentary to have a look at it! 

2 comments:

  1. Thanks Rachel.Interesting to read your comments. I have seen the documentry you refer too and it is indeed a powerful and thought provokingprogramme/ Thanks for the ost and Adam attended the training today and loved it.

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  2. thanks for your post. really good to hear how the training is going. Hopefully the rest of the week will be as challenging and thought provoking.

    best wishes xxxx

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