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