Shot of reality

Rachel has done a great job reporting on the content of the conference so perhaps I can share some personal thoughts and challenges from the week. I'm also inspired to write more as I received an email from YMCA Europe’s president saying he enjoyed my last blog. I guess I'd say to you (the readers) please leave comments and keep us inspired!

After the success of the tea party, I will be honest and say the digital activism totally left me feeling flat. A lot of time wasted on things that don’t take much time at all and no clear vision took the shine of this part of the training for me personally.

There was one session that moved me to the point of tears and it was when we looked at issues in our own countries on the scale of conflict. I have much respect for the youth and participants from Georgia, Russia and Cyprus who shared what mattered to them, they were open, honest and real but it was my friend from Karabagh who moved me to tears as she said,

“We are not at war, but sometimes it feels like it”

It was a touching moment, and a real shot of reality for me. One of the other participants caught that I had tears in my eyes and she approached me later to say that she was touched someone from the west could react this way. Through all the jokes and energisers it’s the moments like this that set the peace institute apart from other projects in my humble opinion and why I love being involved.

As part of the project we are split into areas to work towards tandem grants for post conflicting countries, I find myself representing Kosovo and in the Balkans tandem grant group. One thing we all agreed on and saw as an extra to the project was building leaders/capacity for our own YMCA movements. I got the unfortunate task of feeding back to everyone and was quickly shot down by the leadership; this led to a debate over what were “YMCA people?” One theory was ‘everyone is YMCA, they just don't know it’ others mainly from the east side of Europe told me they didn't get the concept of a movement and that it seemed a rather closed concept.

Now I'm not mentioning this to start a mass debate or argument I just found the concept interesting, as a Change Agent I understand that globally we are waking up the giant and that also transfers down to local and national movements. Surely if ‘everyone was YMCA’ we wouldn't need these Agents? Perhaps this also begins to explain why sometimes people I meet on training have only a few weeks or months in the movement? It will be interesting to see this process and how an Englishman operates in this tandem grant group so watch this space!

In conclusion I’ve had a very challenging week but not in the way I thought it would be, I'm now questioning my role here on the other side of Europe and how I view/do things. I'm also wondering about the effectiveness of a giant that has two arms doing two completely things? As we move onto the festival it’s a time for strong leaders and leadership, I look forward to being challenged and at the same time challenging. So no inspirational quote or thought to end this blog… just a man, humbled and challenged, lost in his thoughts but determined to succeed.