Kiran's legacy is impressive, but theres still stuff to do.
If you haven't heard it yet, Kiran is leaving us by January 31st for a new challenge (good luck!). The IO and the IEC will have to go through the process of hiring a new Educational Officer for IO to take over Kiran's job...but wait, do they really? Is there any stuff left over at all to be completed by an educational employee? I'd say yes for three reasons: First of all, having had somebody with an Educational background at IO for the last 4 years has been a success story, and should be continued. Secondly, the educational development of CISV is an ongoing, continuing process. We'll always have to adapt our programmes to change. Finally, there's specific tasks that require some attention in the immediate future. And these are as follows:
If you haven't heard it yet, Kiran is leaving us by January 31st for a new challenge (good luck!). The IO and the IEC will have to go through the process of hiring a new Educational Officer for IO to take over Kiran's job...but wait, do they really? Is there any stuff left over at all to be completed by an educational employee? I'd say yes for three reasons: First of all, having had somebody with an Educational background at IO for the last 4 years has been a success story, and should be continued. Secondly, the educational development of CISV is an ongoing, continuing process. We'll always have to adapt our programmes to change. Finally, there's specific tasks that require some attention in the immediate future. And these are as follows:
1. Grand unifying theory
Albert Einstein started looking for it, but until this day, physicists still haven't found a formula to explain the universe. I hope for CISV we are more successful: While every single CISV programme makes a lot of sense by itself, we need a concept that unifies all of our educational goals. "Global Active Citizenship" is a good start, but isn't quite embraced by every CISVer. So, we either need a better theory, or a better understanding how every CISV programmes fits in. Last but not least, we need to articulate it in a way, that CISVers old and new, as well as non-CISVers can easily understand it.
2. Educational Department - ready, set, go!
With a bunch of personnel changes and restructuring the Educational Department is really still in its infancy. Under the leadership of a few volunteers and the new educational officer this department needs to be turned into a workhorse: This includes creating a defined distribution of responsibilities, terms of references, finding great people to take over the positions (and stick to them), maximizing output including internal development as well as external publication in the world of educational research.
3. Activities - the key stone of CISV
At one end of CISV there's our educational approach: What we want to achieve, expressed in our goals and indicators. At the other end of CISV there's our programme structures: Camp-, interchange-, project-format, age-limits, timeframe. In the middle lies something that we haven't been focusing on too much, recently, and that's our activities. A great CISV programme is usually the result of great activities. I know there's an activity database - but it's outdated. Also, there activity handbooks - but they've never been evaluated. Somebody needs to take a look at our best activity templates, and try to make them better. What are the activities, that no Summer Camp should go without? What is explicitly important when running them, to make them most effective and reach their individual goals? Maybe somebody actually has to go to a camp and watch how "Blue and Yellow" is being planned, conducted and evaluated. How can we manage to make every "Blue-and-Yellow" activity an impressive and lasting experience in every single camp?
That being said, I think that the job is a fascinating challenge, and maybe even somebody with CISV experience could apply. On the other hand, somebody that brings in new ideas may from other areas may be just as good or even better. We'll see.
