From Changing Rooms to Changing Worlds

Hello all,

This past week or so has been a bit of a whirlwind! Moving Stuart and his stuff to the Global Youth Work Shed of Dreams (tm) was tiring and strange but it is great to hear that you are settling in, Stuart. Can't wait to see the place - if I give Niki a camera, can we have a virtual tour next week?

Barnsley was also good and it was great to see Andrea before she embarks on motherhood. They have done some really nice global youth work in the past and have a great facility to use to assist them. Their radio station (radio barnsley - plug!) is an asset that they are struggling to make use of due to some internal politics but hopefully we might be able to work with the worker covering for Andrea to push to use it!

What else - right, well the YMCA England induction was ok but could have been better. I knew a lot of what was being said and it wasn't much of a networking event (which, after all, is why I went). Still, I managed to get across what YCI is all about both in the UK and overseas so a few more knowledgeable souls in the world.

Been busy this week Changing Worlds with Lindsay, Kelly Drake and Lord Rupert. Really good group for this training - around 11 people in all, which considering 3 cancelled late on was brilliant! The feedback was positive but as I have said to some of you, there could be more activities in future train-the-trainers events that aren't normally included in the young people's version. While Amanda, Alexis and Clare would have likely enjoyed the course and politely given positive feedback, I can't help thinking that it was less useful to them, having done the course with young people multiple times.

Went off to West London YMCA TUMBLER in Hayes and Harlington this morning, which was grand - posters of their seed funding on the online forum soon! Then took time with Matt to chat through some ideas for training days - more on this at the departmental meeting but I'm really excited about what we could do with them. On the horizon we have YCI On Gangs, Guns and Knives (move over Ross Kemp!), the "Resident Global" residential in Ireland, "Paint Your Own World" in Sunderland with Sue, a potential Israel-Palestine based day and a Pants to Poverty Party! PHEW!

Next week I'm probably off to this DfID/CSF Steering Committee on Weds, doing some random tidying and dumping of printers and the like, working through trust proposals and newsletter stuff oh and going to THORPE PARK on Friday :D



Whoooo... scared already!!!! EEEK!