The network gives the roots and the wings – Just Act!
JCI is a network which gives the roots and the wings for its members. It depends on the individual member, will she open the wings and take a chance to explore existing possibilities, gain new experiences, network and grow as a person through these.
JCI Baltic Conference gathers annually international JCs to join the joint spring term conference of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. As the program is normally fully in English, it is an easy event for JCs around the Europe to travel and enjoy the special warm, relaxed Baltic hospitality and JC spirit.
This year the JCI Baltic Conference – under the theme of RelationShip 2016 – took place in Klaipeda, Lithuania. A rather small JCI national organization and local JCI chapter had built up a weekend with plenty of interesting business visits, trainings, workshops and get-togethers. Not to forget the Baltic Awards gala, which introduced not only active chapters and individual members, but also local culture through dance and music performances.
It is the era of internationalization, multicultural team work and growing cooperation. JCI gives the kind of platform for its members where diplomacy, multicultural team building and communication skills can be practiced efficiently. During the weekend plans for future cooperation was done widely and best practices shared through workshops, breakfast discussions and individual meetings. Also Finnish examples of projects and partnerships were introduced to interested participants, together with Estonia.
From Finland we had a great delegation of seven active members in Klaipeda. JCI Finland is a big and valued organization within JCI. Also in Klaipeda it was a pleasure to see how our participation was taken. And not the least as the coming European Conference in Tampere was promoted for attending JCs!
In this single one event it was possible for me personally to learn through practice about communication approaches used by the FBI, to hear about perseverance need-
ed to make a change and how this functioned related to modernizing London city as well as schools at the UK, to learn about several innovative startups and project ideas, and to build up for support systems for our neighboring JCI countries. When thinking that this is just one person’s view, and the impact is multiplied taking into account the all approximately 90 participants, one must admit that JCI truly has the power to make an enormous impact and make it efficiently!
Membership growth and engagement, impactful project building, functional partnership care and active member support. Several key note speakers and trainers took up these topics during the conference and reminded the participants about the special characteristics which we JCs have. As it was well said during one of the trainings: When the times get hard, the others leave and JCs start working even harder! Courage is our asset and I encourage YOU to take the chance and start planning YOUR next international training or conference visit as soon as you can! European Conference in Tampere in June is a good place to start with. But after that there are also e.g. a wide range of other conferences around Europe, EU Know-How Transfer in Brussels, Global Partnership Summit in New York and World Congress in Quebec coming. All these just wait for members to join!
Huhtikuu 23.2016 - Tiina Naskali
