SI MONTHLY NEWS February March 2006 Youth
From SI Exco News
- Servas Youth -
Hello gang! Here is Pablo Chufeni from Argentina again.
This month is the international conference in Latina, near to Rome in Italy, when a lot of important decisions for the future of our organisation are going to be made, and there we will be with a lot of ideas and proposals to develop the youth potential into Servas.
The full report of activities that we will present to the General Assembly (GA) and the complete proposal will be uploaded on the web site www.siexco.org if you want further info, but the goal of this article is just share with you a brief view at least.
After Barcelona Servas Youth worked on different topics. We sent articles and reports to the “Servas Monthly News” to every edition with fresh info, also to the “Servas South America Newsletter” to each one of its 3 editions, the third one is on the way. We sent material to “Servas News” and to several national web sites like US, Canada, Spain, Argentina, Poland, etc. We strongly believe that this diffusion is crucial in our activity. The creation of a youth web site for Servas was also a goal that we achieved, youth.servas.org is there waiting to your visit, actually now we are working on making more attractive and dynamic, with more pictures and a link with other interesting web sites.
Patagonia’06, the first Servas Youth International meeting was a total success. 60 delegates from 15 countries from South and North America, Europe, Asia and Australasia. The agenda was huge, with a total focus in discussions and workshops to develop the youth potential in Servas, to think about the interaction of different generations, to design new programs to Servas Youth and to write an statement, the “PATAGONIA’06 STATMENT” took a lot of work but we did it. The idea is that this statement will help to think in the future of Servas Youth, is like a guideline. Every member signed it the last day after discussions and re-discussions. The Statement will be also be included in the report that we will do for the GA.
The last year the trial experience of the “Servas Youth Languages Exchange” (SYLE) between Argentina and Brasil was a hit. A young member of Servas Brasil went to Rosario City, Argentina to learn Spanish with the Servas system. Interact with the local culture and atmosphere, the best way available as surely all that had the opportunity to learn a language abroad must know. Was great to the local group that hosted the traveller also, the best way to build a group in every way is to have a clear goal to achieve, Servas Rosario is now a very active and dynamic group that is ready to host the second step of the SYLE, a young traveller from Servas Canada will go this year. And one of the achievements of Patagonia was the concretion of another two ports cities to the program, Mexico DF and Sao Paulo in Brasil where another two travellers will go this year to learn Spanish and Portuguese. The third level of the program include Canada to be available to have French and English included, and we will do it.
Servas Youth was present in the bi-national conference US-Canada during last August working with a group of young members and running some workshops and also we had a few working meetings in Mexico. The outcome of these visits are clear. Personal contacts help a lot, that´s why the meetings are so important. And surely the next GA in Italy will be another step to Servas Youth. Our proposal is good and we hope to find support for it.
The potential of the youth is huge, and I think that Servas is discovering it. I am ready to continue working on, and you are more than invited to join us.
Thanks for you time. Pablo Chufeni
