CISV left the Village doctrine but hasn't quite found its new identity.
Life was easy, when CISV was still mostly the Village programme: The name of our organization made perfect sense, the concept of a camp bringing kids together from different nations was easy to explain. And what a lovely story, that it all went back to Doris Allen, who read the NY Times and said, "We have to start with the children".
In the 21st century now, CISV consists of 7 programmes that should all be treated equally: Three of these (Mosaic, Interchange, and to some extent IPP) aren't really camps, two (Mosaic and IPP) don't specifically deal with children and one (IPP) even goes beyond the main concept of education by definition, by making a contribution to a community.
So what the heck is CISV? How can we bring it all together? Quite obviously it's all mostly about education. We're looking for cross cultural competence, based on the ASK-model. We're talking Peace Education (again) and we're building global friendship and active global citizens. But it's all getting quite complicated and somehow the key stone appears missing.
Apparently, with the loss of the Village programme as our centerpiece everybody is a little bit lost as what CISV really is. No wonder, we're discussing the tagline again, we just agreed on 4 years ago. No wonder we've recently created a dozen committees that deal with raising profile, education, evaluation and so on. No wonder, we had to throw the educational circle over bord and came up with 4 new areas. Similarly Section T got an overhaul and is now called "The Passport" and "Big Ed." And even if it seems like a minor point - our not-so-old branding guidelines are also being questioned.
It all seems like a big mess, but hopefully some day it will all nicely blend together to a great new identity that we all, from the IEC down to the village parent, can easily understand, commit to, and convey.
Oh, and it's a great time to be around, because dynamic times are also times where creative and inspired people can have influence and shape CISV for the future. But what that future looks like, we still need to determine.
Life was easy, when CISV was still mostly the Village programme: The name of our organization made perfect sense, the concept of a camp bringing kids together from different nations was easy to explain. And what a lovely story, that it all went back to Doris Allen, who read the NY Times and said, "We have to start with the children".
In the 21st century now, CISV consists of 7 programmes that should all be treated equally: Three of these (Mosaic, Interchange, and to some extent IPP) aren't really camps, two (Mosaic and IPP) don't specifically deal with children and one (IPP) even goes beyond the main concept of education by definition, by making a contribution to a community.
So what the heck is CISV? How can we bring it all together? Quite obviously it's all mostly about education. We're looking for cross cultural competence, based on the ASK-model. We're talking Peace Education (again) and we're building global friendship and active global citizens. But it's all getting quite complicated and somehow the key stone appears missing.
Apparently, with the loss of the Village programme as our centerpiece everybody is a little bit lost as what CISV really is. No wonder, we're discussing the tagline again, we just agreed on 4 years ago. No wonder we've recently created a dozen committees that deal with raising profile, education, evaluation and so on. No wonder, we had to throw the educational circle over bord and came up with 4 new areas. Similarly Section T got an overhaul and is now called "The Passport" and "Big Ed." And even if it seems like a minor point - our not-so-old branding guidelines are also being questioned.
It all seems like a big mess, but hopefully some day it will all nicely blend together to a great new identity that we all, from the IEC down to the village parent, can easily understand, commit to, and convey.
Oh, and it's a great time to be around, because dynamic times are also times where creative and inspired people can have influence and shape CISV for the future. But what that future looks like, we still need to determine.
We approved a significant spending by a Management Consultancy. I would not be surprised if they come back by AIM 2011 and say that our (international) organisation has become way too complex.
Simplify, stick to your core business, is typical management consultancy mantras.
Another proper CISV Devil thought would be that the camp programmes + interchange are the ones that actually earn us any money. Gut Feeling says that Mosaic and IPP is what we would love to do "full time"; but that the inconvenient truth is that camps for children (+ interchange) is what pays for the organisation.
Could we envision a future where Mosaic and IPP would carry with it a majority of our income (either through participation fees or through sponsorship)?
And isn't Mosaic and IPP to a large degree something we are enabled to do because we have attended the grades at the school of CISV?
Interesting times indeed!
I say we should not be a programme-based organization anymore.
We should have just Educational Committees divided by age range, and CISV should be very aware of the EDUCATIONAL PATH we want to give starting with the children.
So we should have a "starting point", said a Committee offering activities (not just villages) to 11 year olds, based mainly on Intercultural Awareness and Diversity.
A "second step", meaining a committee that gives the youth a little more than the intercultural experience but not just interchange, for 12-13 year olds. Something "deeper" but yet not so self-planned.
A "third step", for 14-15, a Committee that deals with creating leadership skills and prepares participants to be active in CISV and not passive anymore. Build self confidence and empowering the self esteem, but not just through Summer Camps.
A "fourth step", the Junior Branch, that takes care of the active participants created by the third step and leads them with various programmes and activities until they are ready to become "adults"
A "fifth step", that should replace the actual seminar camp, to finally create active global citizens that are ready to make a difference and are ready to take over and lead the newbies
A "sixth and final step" wich is today IPP and Leader Training, which deals with adults and offers different programmes and training for people to put what they learned in CISV into action or trains them on how to be a leader for the new kids.
Mosaic should be merged into all of this, because the Mosaic programme will be an option for every of the "steps" to develop and organize.
@Lars: I don't think the consultancy that we are going to hire will go so far as to question the programmatic setup of our organization - at least I hope not. But I guess your message is right: CISV has become way to complex. In the early days of IPP we actually considered splitting off entirely into a separate organization, if CISV was not going to accept IPP as a part of itself. This may still be an option, even more if we look at the different kinds of volunteers we are attracting: Some are unimpressed by working with kids, others have no interest whatsoever in Mosaic nor IPP.
I don't think we should set our priorities according to which programmes are paying into our *international* budget - Mosaics e.g. may be able to attract many many people into becoming chapter members and therefor adding to the local budget, if money is the perspective you want to take.
@Max: I like your concept but I personally would question the "CISV life curriculum" concept. Do people really need to go through several programmes to improve their ASKs? I don't think so...
Max, how is that system not just "school"?
@Max: I agree with you to a large extent. We need to move away from marketing programmes independently to market our educational ladder. Currently the programme committees shape their programmes rather independently (adding or removing age groups etc.), with rather little "central educational leadership".
As other pointed out we should refrain from making it sound like school. Additionally I would say that we must be clear on that our programmes can be enjoyed all together, or individually. (There is no compulsory "path" to peace education nirvana - and we are no sect.)
I think both Youth Meetings and Mosaics are important to bind it all together. Question (more to myself to check) is; how many of our Mosaic programmes actually involve CISV kids?
@Nick: We should not let the money guide it all, but if we want to change (drastically) the direction to go in then we would need to validate the feasibility of it all.
Actually it would be interessting to know more about what the chapters believe it; their demographics is different than that of CISV on national and international level.
As to Nick's question about the magic formula of CISV: I have been thinking about it for a few days, and to me it seems like part of our magic formula is serialization, and the extensive use of laymen (here read as: people that are not trained and/or have no interest in ASK etc.) to organize our programmes. Essentially a lot of untrained people can do 90% of the effort to run a deep peace educating activity for ~25-70 people. Everything you need to do as a chapter you get as a "check-list", and you only need 2-3 trained staff to actually run the programme. (Taken to the extreme they don't even have to come from your chapter...) Perfect for Parents to organize.
Also; a lot of our education is done implicitly, ie. we don't really have to think about it all that much - this especially applies to our youngest participants.
This is Peace Education - Instant-Soup-Style!
Again IPP and Mosaic fall a bit "on the side" as the content is uniquely planned for each programme, with new partners and projects each time. This takes a lot more content involvement also in the planning phase, and generally more genuinely interested organizers.
Can we make IPP and Mosaic also work "Instant-Soup-Style", or would the baby get thrown out with the bathwater in that case?
@Lars: With this post I wasn't specifically looking for a magic formula on how to make the CISV experience happen (more a magic formula that explains what CISV is in a philosophical sense), but you bring up an interesting point: "Instant Soup" is exactly what Mosaic and IPP are lacking and making them difficult to host.
I've covered "standardization" before in the 6x6 post: http://www.absolutpicknick.de/mt/cisv_from_the_balcony/2010/07/6x6.html
@Sarah and @Nick: actually it's totally different from school. Of course every "step" could be taken by itself and as Lars said every programme could be enjoyed individually.
What I'm saying is that for example "11 year olds" shouldn't just forcus on a programme but on a variety of activities (local, national, international)specific for that age that are not just the Village. And what today is the Village committee is the expert body that should provide NAs, PAs and chapters with all the material they need to orgnize a Village, but also to run any other new and educational activity that includes 11.
Taken to the extreme, why don't we just split up the whole of CISV? CISV Ltd handles all the organizing (Finance, Football pools, Insurance,...) as a service provider, and several sub-companies (with their distinct names) provide the educational activities... no need for big AIMs any more, as every company can do their own AIMs, no big hassle with bringing all programmes into one streamlined standard, every "company" can adjust its structure to its own needs... and take care of one special age group, or any other partition of our target audience.
@Nick: I think it is very closely related. My interpretation of why we don't know who we are anymore is that we have 7 different programmes, each unique, each different, which today sort of run their own shows, each fighting for attention and resources, and each trying to move the organisation in their direction.
I think that a storyline (as propsposed by Max) could help out showing each "part" of the organisation how they fit in the big picture. Knowing who we are, and who we want to be - and agreeing on it - is a natural prerequisite to defining this storyline. The rest should follow rather easily.
My gut feeling is that we now have a strategic plan that does not address this at all, it merely says "do more of the same with better quality", so the "fighting gones on", and the question is if we will reach a consensus "organically", or if we need a "managed change".