IT'S TIME TO
#RebuildConnectLead in Europe and #RISEwithJCI!
There’s no better way of fulfilling the JCI mission and vision in Europe at this point in time than being a force of empowerment to our individual members, our communities and our businesses in each and every country.
By Nicole Borg
Back in February, during the 2020 European Presidents’ Meeting, which was one of the last conferences we could all meet together in person, the 2020 National Presidents decided it was time to rethink the previously established Step Up For Europe campaign. The aim was to redesign it into something that steers away from European Union politics and could be more universally applied by all European countries. A taskforce was later established whereby it worked to identify where Europe needed to focus on at that period in time. The work of the taskforce started right at the beginning of the spread of coronavirus in Europe and immediately the team felt the need to put together an initiative and a scope to help Europe survive the turmoil. Here came the birth of the #RebuildConnectLead initiative. #RebuildConnectLead is the European push towards making JCI Rise a reality and an actively used campaign within the continent of Europe. Within Europe, it is believed that National and Local Organizations have an opportunity to showcase the leadership aspect of
JCI by having an active role in the rebuilding of communities, businesses and the economy and also connecting businesses, politicians and communities together in a time of desperate need for proper regeneration. The aim behind #RebuildConnectLead is to empower our members into being active leaders of positive change within their societies through different prototype project ideas that they could implement in their National Organizations based on the three themes: (1) Leadership Skills, (2) Business Supports, (3) Individual Needs. These three points align with the four pillars of JCI, being Business, Individual, Community and International. A two-step process The taskforce wanted to give a simple process that would help organizations come up with their own ideas and partners to engage within projects. This besides giving a sample of 10 project ideas Local and National Organizations could implement.
Step 1: The first step is for the National Organization to look into the kind of areas the country needs to improve or needs support in by making use of tools such as the JCI Active Citizen Framework. Here, the National Organization can identify the national need and empower the Local organizations to seek and implement projects that tackle that need. They need to ask themselves 3 simple questions: REBUILD: What matters to you? CONNECT: Who will you work with to address this and succeed? LEAD: How will your leadership be seen as an example?
Step 2: The second step is to transfer the results of the National Organization to the Local Organizations whereby they are given a focus for their JCI Rise themed projects.