And @Nick, the "intuitive" was not meant to say how you do the statistics (I believe they are mathematically proof an sound), but more on your choice of indicators (meaning, working with the indicators we have and choosing the "obvious" ones; it was meant to be a compliment on how intuitive and easy it is to understand how the indicators work together. I don't believe this would be possible using complex mathematical and statistical methods which are in use in data mining...).

http://agricultureguide.org/

(thanks to Mae Cooper for the link).

Nevertheless, I still think that we already are accumulating tons of data, with quite some volunteer working hours involved:
- PDPEF data
- participants info
- CISV friends data
- membership lists
- camp budgets

Just, that it's vastly decentralized and it may be of no use whatsoever, if nobody tries to make sense of the big picture.

One last thing: I disagree that FTB has a tradition of "intuitively" trying to measuere things, quite the contrary: I actually did try to crunch the data once in a while to check the validity of certain asumptions, such as "AIMs booster volunteer motivation".

Membership: As Katie said above, a database of strictly CISV members/participants would be highly useful in the retention of volunteers and potential financial development of the organization. This is, in a sense, what Friends is for, although I think its implementation hasn't been very well put into place. CISV USA's current "database" (if one can call it that) is made up of several boxes of microfilm (seriously!) dating back several decades. As far as I know, the NA still pays a company to transfer YLIF/ALIF & other forms to microfiche. NOTHING is digitized. This is a waste of money and resources, and a bear when it comes to searching for past participants.

Imagine a secured online database which stores participant information, forms, and more. I've been witness to the complete digital transformation of contact and admissions data as an assistant in my univeristy's graduate school, all thanks to two pieces of web-based software. From those two systems, my coworkers and I are able to search for specific contacts, send "blast" e-mails to groups of prospective students, track web information, and more. Of course, access to this software comes at a price. I'm not sure the complete price, but I'm guessing its in the tens of thousands of dollars. Would that be worth it for CISV USA? I'm not sure.

Academic Research: Those in academia love their data. Having a digitized database of information regarding participants and other "of interest to academics" stuff would be useful to those doing research of CISV programs.

Those are just a few ideas...

That's the response to the (probably provocative?) headline, but let's take a look at the arguments:
First, data mining (defined as recognizing patterns in big amounts of data) needs one thing we do not have: big amounts of data. Now, as far as I remember, FTB has always been advocating decentralized organisational patterns, a cut-down on bureaucratic obstacles, and an "intuitive" way of measuring aspects of CISV's success and effectiveness.
Assuming that we collect three values for each delegate (say, travel cost, a "quality" value out of the PDPEF, and a "send again?" -yes/no-value), CISV Austria would generate around 200 data sets a year (which would probably be an additional 100 hours of work, assuming that the infrastructure for storing this data is readily avialable), which would mean we'd have to make a board member responsible only for that.
With 3-4 Camps, 1 or 2 Mosaic Projects and 6-10 Interchanges a year, another 100 hours would accumulate for generating the data for our programmes. (Maybe less if all we focus on is what already is in PDPEF, but if we want to include things like costs, sponsor funds, staff work, site evaluation, etc. a lot more data has to be collected and entered.)
So, two more volunteer "positions" in our national Board, just for data collection? That would be more than 10% of our board...

Secondly, assuming we really start collecting this data: how do we handle it? I mean: what questions do we ask that we cannot answer yet, and how would they impact our work? Say for example that camps in NA X turn out to be very expensive in terms of travel costs, whereas NA M's camps are not only cheaper, but also have the same quality. Does that mean NA X doesn't get to host that camp any more? Would we actually look into _consequences_ when discovering things like that? And in how many cases would the answer be something plain obvious (that flights overseas are more expensive than intracontinental flights)?

Thirdly: yet another IO staff? A paid (and expensively so), full time data miner? .....

And on the last question: Should CISV focus more on the needs of those 10% (i.e. 6 NA's) that host 60% of the camps? Definitely: no. They're obviously coming along well in the World Of CISV. Focus on those 90% that host the rest, and ask what you can do to improve this ratio :-) After all, how much more do you want to "sell" to those 6 NA's?

After that I think we should also include what you're talking about with camps and evaluations.

Sarah couldn't have put it in any clearer terms! As for Hani's comment, maybe this might shed some light on how Diversity and Identity have been worked on so far:

Identity as a Theme and Diversity as our annual Content Area have been developed very closely. Both Rou and I have been working in a team of people who are coordinating our Diversity efforts, and at the same time contributing to our IJB & YM Theme.

These weren't developed independently – in fact, at AIM 2010, Kelly and I had met with the Educational Department bringing forward of working with organisational themes. It was then agreed to work with organisational content areas instead, which would at the same time fit the choice of our Identity theme (which was already being worked on)!

Also, at the Writeshop in Newcastle a few weeks ago, as IJRs we were asked to run a presentation on how IJB works with themes, in order to share our successful experience with it with people from all committees.

There will be a session being run at all 2010 RTFs on Diversity, and a part of it will show the Identity Theme as a model for picking and developing themes that fall under the Diversity domain.

So as you can see... these weren't worked on independently of each other at all. :)

Hugs,
Maru

I read Clemzi's article now, and I am very much in agreement with the point that it is a paradox that we as an organization travel so much, in order to learn that we need to be more sustainable.

However, both the world, and my knowledge of climate politics and CISV politics has changed since this motion. I believe we could propose a similar motion again now, but with some modifications.

The reasons Nick lists were truly lame, and straight forward wrong.

First, we were never going to donate money, but rather buing a service from an organization. Like we buy airline tickets from corporate organizations. So this argument is invalid.

Second, the point on how these organizarions manage their funds, is more valid. But now, in contrast to back then, it is possible to buy the Kyoto quotas (CERs) that are generated from emission reduction or EU quotas (EUAs) directly. See this link from the Norwegain government as an example: http://co2.klif.no/en/-HOVEDMENY-/English/

Buying the EU quota removes one quota from the cap-and-trade market for CO2-quotas meaning that no tree has been planted, but less CO2 is allowed to be submitted among the participants in the EU ETA

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/climat/emission/index_en.htm.

It is a different approach from the NGOs selling "quotas" that are really just compansating for other emissions.

I believe that proposing a motion for buying such "official" quotas effectively takes away both the arguments that were used last time around.

The caveat is that with no new binding agreement, there will not be an "official" (and much less efficient) market for CO2 quotas after 2012 (which is when the Kyoto-market ends).

I am very enthustiastic about supporting any effort of getting this on the agenda again.

I'm curious if the app takes off...

- It would be nice if you could specify which country you were representing and what was your role at the camp. Just like in Friends.

- It seems that there's a max size for the name of the programs, two of mine were cut short.

- Instead of listing all programs by their names, it would be easier to find yours (and decrease the creation of duplicate camps) if they were filtered by country.

- Two hosting countries for Interchanges.

- The possibility to create/link to the page of the camp, as Nano said.

- An option to avoid the creation of duplicate camps would be using the official reference numbers. However, I do not like the idea, as nearly 100% of kids don't even know there's such thing, I guess.

- Make an "add programme & myself" button so that people to create one input, populate the DB and their track record
- Have an option for multiple inclusions so if people know their activities by heart (very likely) they are able to include them all at once

I would like to see an application (and I don't mean this should be the space, but who knows) that as you populate the database, it automatically (or not) creates a group or fan page and gives you the chance to subscribe to it, add the camp t-shirt, photos, videos, etc for that specific activity.

From the user experience perspective, I know CISV Friends catalogues a 2000-2001 camp as it happened in 2000. I wonder if because of the possibility of including whatever date you want, people will start to create duplicate camps. Also, should people include the "Camp" word in the name of the camp? Like "Three Cookies Village" or is the name "Three Cookies" and it should be catalogued under Village programmes? What if someone made a mistake with the name or date of a camp, can they go back and erase it?

Yeah, so besides these perhaps useless comments, I like the idea, but I think that unless there's a "Create a Page" button somewhere, it's just CISV Friends under the Facebook roof (which, granted, makes connecting with people easy) and not create the sense of community between people participating in the same activity.

I wonder if CISV Friends should have a "Create a Facebook Page" button for each activity. Maybe it could even use the Friends' e-mail database (with permission, obviously) to invite the people in Friends to a "social" space.

Good times...

In the CISV Education Glossary (Draft):
Content Area = One of the four areas that make up the conceptual framework for CISV’s Peace Education. The Content Areas are: Diversity, Human Rights, Conflict and Resolution and Sustainable Development.

Theme = A unifying central idea that provides inspiration and structure.

That makes the IJB/IYM Theme a way for us to break the huge area of Diversity into a manageable, relatable subject that provides a starting point. I see them as compatible, but perhaps the marketing of both could have better identified how it relates/doesn't relate to the other.