Holiday greetings

Hey all,

A couple of days late, but we hope you all had lovely Christmases and fun plays a large part in you New Years! 

Louisa is back in Sheffield, and James is in Switzerland/France, but don't worry, we're preparing for a brilliant 2009! See you then!

Festive Love to all,

Louisa & James

One day in York...

Meetings and Greetings

Happy Holiday Season to all!

We have just this last Saturday been to the December National Council meeting in Leeds (see us having fun there in the pic). What's this? We'll, it's one of the four meetings every year that representatives from each senior branch, the chairman, secretary, treasurer, trustee, NJRs (that's us) and minutes person who run CISV Great Britain get together to sort everything out.

This time, some quite important stuff went down, we elected a new trustee Nic Hargreaves to start a 3 year term in September - well done mate, though our current trustee Laura Green isn't done yet! The places for 16+ programs were also decided, so if you applied, you'll be hearing from your branches soon. We also discussed things like recent events, safeguarding and how new child protection laws will affect us, how to solve our over 21 problems and the budget. Interesting times, and gave us a lot to think about.

In other news, we hope to be seeing you soon at some of our brilliant upcoming weekends:
-Mancfield/Shefchester minicamp, 23rd-25th January
-NJBF - 31st Jan - 2nd February, probably Bramhope, TBC
-Year 9/10 - 13th - 15th February, TBC
-17+ Weekend - 20th - 22nd February, Hebden Hey

Very importantly, if you think you're over 16 and think you'd like to staff the year 9/10 minicamp, definitely let us know, and if you'd like any info about any of the weekends, please email us at njr@gb.cisv.org

What else is cooking? Well the merchandise is coming along, and we'll soon be able to release a sneak preview of what's to come, the national website is also finally happening (if you have any ideas of what the JB page should include, please send us your suggestions), and we're also thinking about the upcoming international events that we might just be going to - who wants to come with us to EJBM (European Junior Branch Meeting) in Austria, or IJBC (International Junior Branch Conference) in Guatemala?

Otherwise, we send you seasons greetings, and hope you're buying Leeds' Christmas puddings in preparation for festivities!

Love, Lou & Jam

Year 7/8 and some Louisa loving!

Hey everyone!

So this is me, Louisa reporting from a train somewhere between the lovely misty York and sunny Sheffield after the amazing Y7/8 mini-camp! A massive shout out to the awesome staff team or Ian Wallbridge, Felicity Edwards-Wright and Luke Marsden – once again doing GeeBeeJayBee proud! If you were there I hope you had as much fun as I did!

On a completely different note, I would like to apologise for my general quiet presence in GBJB at the moment and a massive shout out to James for handling everything the last few weeks! As some of you know, I'm currently travelling to Hull everyday, which along with my essays and background reading doesn't leave a lot of time for CISV. However, as I'm now a lot more settled in, I've got a bit more time for you guys – which is always nice!

You may also be excited to know that me and James have been working behind the scenes on some very very exciting new merchandise which I can say without a doubt will be the best GBJB or in fact the world has ever seen! If anybody wants to be involved with this very exciting project, particularly if you're a graphics whizz – just give us an email on njr@gb.cisv.org! We'd love to hear from yooou. (Also, we'd like to be better than Frances merchandise, which is unfortunately very
cool – check out their JBPedia page on www.ijb.cisv.org/mwiki)

While you're checking that out, here are a few more things to distract you from school...

* www.ijb.cisv.org/library
* www.ijb.cisv.org/devils
* http://resources.cisv.org
* www.ijb.cisv.org/jbcommunity
* www.cisv.org

Other exciting things coming up include...

* MancField
* Year 9/10 mini-camp
* NJBF
* 17+

And in the pipeline...CISV GBJB's First Annual Pantomime! This is actually going to happen, I'm just not entirely sure how yet...if you want to be involved, again just drop us or your reps an email!

I do hope you're all jolly and enjoying your pre-christmas lives (excluding exams – we all know they're rubbish – but important!) Do well in school kids.

Take care! Until soon...

Louisa
Your occasionally vacant, but nevertheless enthusiastic NJR.

GB Chapter Development Weekend

Well well look here if it isn't an NJR writing on here within a week of the last one!

Why the excitement? Well, this weekend, James hopped along back up north to the GB development workshop, along with a bunch of other people from both Senior and Junior branch. It wasn't a JB weekend, but rather 2 days run by two lovely Swedish ladies, Eva and Ida, who helped CISV GB to evaluate ourselves, learn a lot, and reconsider how GB works, and how we should develop. It was very interesting, and thanks a lot to Ida and Eva, and also to all the others that helped make it happen (Laura!)

While it was targeted at CISV GB as a whole, which of course is important for us all, there were a few things that struck me particularly, and I thought were pretty applicable to GBJB. Through the weekend, we considered how we would like to grow, and came up with 4 possible 'goals' that we as GB may want to work towards:

1) To become a well structured transparent and trained organisation.
2) To develop a long term plan for increasing activities for different age groups, internationally, nationally and locally.
3) To develop a strong brand.
4) To have stable finances at all levels as a means of achieving growth.

I thought that maybe these were goals that we could apply to GBJB, so I hope we'll get the chance to consider these soon, at NJBF or whenever.

The other thing that sticks in my mind, is that in CISV Sweden, they now try to change their way of thinking about what they do, by asking themselves if everything they are doing is leading towards peace? I think this is interesting, and believe that maybe this way of thinking about what we do may help us be more productive and effective, as well as keeping us focused on our goals.

That's quite a lot of good but wordy stuff, so I'll leave you to think about that, and hope we have the chance to suss it out in person soon!

In other news, your NJRs both had quite heavy weeks last week, work and healthwise, but we're both better now, and hope you're well too! We're looking to get some merchandise rolling soon, maybe just maybe before christmas, and look forward to the upcoming weekends!

Inabizzle! James

From SMILE 08

Hey all,

It's James here, writing from the train somewhere between Grantham and Stevenage, on his way back to uni. It's quite hard to concentrate and I'm just sat enjoying whatever thought wobbles through my head.

Why I hear you ask? Well, I've had my mind boggled by the SMILE weekend 2008, which took place this weekend in Scammonden. It was my first weekend as NJR, and I'm happy to report that it seems to have been a great success!

There were people present from all branches, with the highest turnout from LEEDS (I know where I came from), but also massive kudos to North East who had the second biggest attendance, a first in recent GBJB history! The purpose of the weekend is to train all juniors in year 10 and above, preparing them to take a more leading role in their JBs, and also learn some propa skillz on the way.

On the training side, we learnt all about CISV, internationally, nationally, and in GBJB. We heard a bit about what other JBs around the world are like, and also each other's branches, which gave us inspiration and ideas for our own. We also learnt about why JB exists, with JB Essentials and JB Goals, and found out about some tools such as the educational circle and the ASK model, that will help us to run JB meetings, minicamps and anything in general.

On the crazy side, the beautiful Ryan and Dan (or should I say Ben and Phil) brought us the brilliantly received "Do you have the balls?", a rather competitive hour of quiz and challenge! Thanks guys, it was awesome!

All in all, I think all were very happy with the weekend, and that we've got some more bright young things knocking about GBJB to be bright in the future! Thanks to the staff of Kayleigh, Phoebe, Jess, Helen and the NJRs for all efforts.

Hmmm... we just went through Peterborough. The woman 2 seats in front has this maaaaasive bag its pretty ridiculous.

So, what now for your NJRs and GBJB. Well Louisa has just started her placement, it's going well but its taking up a lot of time and energy, and as for me, I'm finding my time management skills stretched to the max trying to do a 2000 word presentation by tuesday. It's all good though, we're alive, healthy (cough cough) and happy.

In GBJB, the next thing is the year 7/8 minicamp in 3 weeks time, in Barnsley. If you are, or know anyone, who is in those years please please please make sure they're going to that camp, it'll be great!

Also, fundraising really needs to get underway, and we're looking at bringing out some new merchandise, which is very very exciting - all I'm going to say is they might be waterproof, or the solution to our 'crack' problem. I think that's all for now... Oh no it isn't... oh yes it is... Heehee, watch this space.

Right, as I'm making less and less sense, I'm going to wish you a sweet November, and if I've missed anything, Louisa might pick up on it.

James

Yello from NJB Day in Leeds!

Hey everybody!

Louisa and James here, reporting from National Junior Branch (NJB) Day in Leeds! (Yay, Leeds!)

With around 80 people here, it's been a very successful day so far, with lots of fun Disney games and piles of really healthy food..cough cough..the aim of NJB day is to get a load of juniors from all over the country together and a good old day of fun and frolics in one of our branches. It's fun for all the family! Along with all of the fun time activities, we try and get some good old education in there about a selected theme, very interesting stuff!

Our next activities are 18+ (31st October - 2nd November) and then SMILE (previously JB Training) on the 7th - 9th November which are going to be fantastic..get in touch at njr@gb.cisv.org for more information – you won't regret it!

Also coming up we have a Branch Development weekend and Year 7/8 mini-camp, but we'll tell you more about that later!

Keep busy kids,
Love

Lou and Jim

Junior NJR calling...

Evenin' all,

I'm James, the/your new Junior NJR for geebeejaybee, elected two weeks ago today. Yes, as Louisa said, I was actually in Congo when it happened, and yes I was the last to know about my own election, but when I did find out I was pretty damn happy - the picture you see is of the moment I got the news, on the side of a mountain by Lake Tanganyika!

For that, I'd like to thank firstly the wonderful NJBF, its truly an honour to be able to do this and it will be a real pleasure to work with you beautiful people over the next two years.

The other BIG thanks goes to Lizzie and Louisa, who worked out and arranged for me to take part in the election even from far away, and for that I am of course extremely grateful. Moreover, a massive thanks is due to Lizzie who I have seen has been phenomenal in the last two years - if I'm honest I'm even a little scared of her, and her massive dedication, innovation and huge spirit! Thanks a lot, and don't worry I'll leave you alone.

Not to say of course, that Louisa hasn't been great, and I'm very much looking forward to tee hee fun times. We had our first meeting today, and you'll be glad to know I'm getting on board steadily with what's going on, though there's still a lot to grasp. We covered quite a lot of ground in the meeting, but I reckon she'll be much better at filling you in on what's going on. I would also like to make it clear that I neither support nor discourage the continuation 'Joonz' in reference to Louisa, and remain neutral, neither using it but also not stopping others.

Lou made me mushroom soup with breadrolls which was surprisingly yum given it glooped out the TescoTin in one mmmm. She's got a lovely room (the biggest in the house of course, well done on that), and I'm now a bit jealous, as I'm about to move into college rooms with about 2000 rules... like boarding school, but slightly older children.

I hope to see you soon, at NJB day next Saturday in Leeds, or at one of the weekends - 18+, S.M.I.L.E.(JBtraining), Year 7/8, 9/10 or NJBF. Any details you need, please email us, njr@gb.cisv.org or james.pattinson@gb.cisv.org

Thanks for bearing with me,
James, Junior NJR Great Britain

The First GBJB NJR Blog post!

Hey!

So, after a quick discussion with the new LJR (Local Junior Representative) team, we (I) decided that it would be a nice idea to let everyone know what we get up to as NJRs on a weekly basis. The idea of this being that you would know who we are and try and "flatten" the pyramid system of leadership that we so often find in CISV, so everyone can feel comfortable talking to an NJR!

So, on that note I will introduce us!

For the year 2008 - 2009, the GBJB NJR team will be...

Louisa Wallbridge and James Pattinson!

Round of applause for James who is currently in the congo, and doesn't know he is NJR yet!

Hopefully in the future he will be a much bigger part of this blog and it won't just be me talking about what I ate for dinner. (n.b. pork chops with mustard - thanks mum)

So as you can see, we have a new NJR, this is because we just had our NJBF meeting in Manchester and elected our new team for the year. There will now be 10 out of a possible 14 males working in the GBJB team, which as one of the four females, is quite a frightening prospect.

NJBF was a really successful weekend, and Lizzie Walmsley, the NJR for 2006 - 2008 stepped down. Lizzie has been an absolutely fabulous senior to have and she's taught me a lot! She's made a huge difference to geebeejaybee the last two years and she will be sadly missed, and we hope that she comes and visits us from time to time!

We are all very excited about the prospect of NJB day in Leeds in a few weeks, where you can buy the lovely FAIRTRADE geebeejaybee merchandise! We are also very excited about the up and coming SMILE weekend, more information on the way about that!

And that's all for now, I'm off to the land of nod.
Have a good week!