On thursday, we spent approximately the whole afternoon and evening discussing the options and brainstorming.
about 3-4 presidents were allocated to one project to focus on, based on the vision that we had on connecting youths (volunteers and non-volunteers alike) and getting them to activate their leadership to make a needed change in society.
so we broke that into 3 projects - facilitation of exchange within SEA, a conference project, and expansion into new universities.
since there are no clear-cut answers to these projects, we were a little stumped by these ideas at first. my group of four worked on the conference idea.
initially all of us had a different idea of what the conference should be, or we didn't have a single clue. we wondered, how grand should this conference be, what is its purpose, who should be involved.. there were so many unanswered questions.
Phuong, the president of the chapter in Vietnam suggested that the conference should center around leadership. Then we delve deeper into the social issues faced in the region, such as the high incidence of HIV/Aids in certain SEA countries, malnutrition and poverty.
Then I commenced to build on this idea - the conference, in my opinion, should have an entirely external focus. we want to know what is happening around the world, what does society think of this? to make this happen, we need to engage stakeholders - both university students within and without the organization, companies, non-profits. we have to pay attention and listen to the world around us, collect that feedback and absorb the ideas. by connecting all these groups, the companies, non-profits can present what projects they are conducting on the ground - i.e. how is food being distributed, how is poverty being tackled through microfinance etc and which regions are most affected by HIV/Aids?
Then youths can give their feedback on the world they would like to see, a world they would like to live in. By facilitating such a dialogue, perhaps there can be more young people who get connected with organizations to act on the issue.
As an organization, AIESEC may well benefit from this. Companies, students, etc give their feedback, we can generate the knowledge and suggestions and tweak our Projects accordingly (innovation and input from the wider society). Developmental traineeships' job descriptions can be better enhanced, based on the kind of expectations non-profits and youths have.
So with these ideas getting kickstarted by 5pm or so, we had time slipping out of our hands since we needed to complete a framework by the time dusk set in. Next, we proceeded to think of a brief timeline, how much investment would be required from each SEA entity to make the conference happen.
That means, we need a coordinator for all 7 countries to handle this project. A full timer will be required. Where should this person be located/living? (The higher the costs of living in a country, the more investment flows out from each country). We ruled out the possibility of Singapore. So taking the salary from Indonesia, we calculated a cost of 200USD per month for the full timer. Collecting that data took some time as well...
And on friday, we spoke to every single group and worked out a more specific timeline for the projects, worked out budget and what kind of milestone should be achieved under each.
By the end of the summit, we made a commitment to follow up with the project in 2 weeks' time. Now i'm on to find 10 companies that are situated / working across at least 3 SEA countries, and would have potential to sponsor the conference which is slated to happen in mar 2011.
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