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.
