National General Secretaries Forum 2013



NGS FORUM, November 18-20 2013
LE ROCHETON, YMCA FRANCE
 
The NGS Forum is a meeting organised by YMCA Europe and lead by its Secretary General Juan Simoes Iglesias. All the National General Secretaries from the European movements are invited for 2-3 days to come and work together on different YMCA topics.
This was the second time I have been involved in this meeting and after this meeting I felt more connected to others and that all the National secretaries were coming closer as a team. We should give some credit here to Juan Simoes Iglesias for initiating something like this which I believe will last for a long time and get better  and better. 
Dorina with Viktor (Macedonia) and Paola (Italy)
Some of the issues we spoke about during the week were working in more collaboration with our EU institution and what the YMCA movement can give to help this. There was also time to discuss the Love 2 live festival and we looked at the evaluation surveys for the event. There was also time to look at global initiatives like Change Agents and the One Million Voices projects. 

I love the fact that we are so different and yet so alike even though we reach right across (and beyond) Europe. When we talked about the work each one of us does it really is amazing the variety involved: Finland who are also the leaders of our Field group and the wonderful work and support they are giving to different countries, YMCA Spain is working on National unemployment and have successfully achieved employment for over 300 people, YMCA Armenia where they are running camps for Syrian children and have Vardan leading the European peace work, Ireland who are leading a  project about living in Diversity and are changing lives! England who shared their re-branding process they are currently working on and that made me think it was amazing that with so many local YMCA and some of the oldest in the world that they are all coming together as one. So much inspiring work and projects with some already showing sparks, I think it is wonderful!
The projects and inspiration were endless and I need more time to talk about each movement, and their great work. I hope in a future blog I will be talking more about all the YMCAs and their personal yet collective image in the European movement.
Until then I'm grateful to be part of the YMCA and to work on our way in the YMCA Way!
"Where humble leaders create long friendships"


Peace,
 Dorina

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