Servas Asia Meeting - Delhi, September 2005
From SI Exco News
You can download it in .doc format at: Servas Asian Meeting in Delhi, September 2005.
Or read it wikified:
Servas Asia Meeting Newsletter (SAM) Date: October 2005Volume 1, Number 1 (edited by Servas India and Exco)
Contents |
SAM Prepares for EGA
Asian National Secretaries talked about their interest in four major subjects. They want to improve the Statu-tes, the Distant Vote, an Account Management System and Appropri-ate Behavior and Conflict Resolu-tion. During discussions they thought of proposals for each subject to take to the EGA. For the Statutes they want:• a statute to limit the number of terms an officer can hold the office• to state a length of term of office• an action to take if stamp fees are not paid on time• a number of voting rights per countries For the Distant Vote they want de-tails of the procedure for:• the personal vote • postal voting• electronic voting For an account management system they want: • delegate funding to be paid at the end of the conference• an account system using vouchers and invoices• a statement saying an advance may only be made if all former advances have been paid back For behavior/conflict resolution they want:• anyone who has a view to express to talk peacefully, constructively and positively. • all correspondence to be peace-fully and positively constructed• everyone to show respect to one another.
BEAUTY, GLAMOR AND TALENT
Sitting at the table midst the delegates, visitors and EXCO, was a young song-bird of radio and television. Her home, half the year, is Nagaland in the north of India. The other half she lives in Delhi and produces shows helping children perform in programs showing their cultural heritage. When asked to sing for us, she stood, in a quiet voice announced she would sing a Folk tune of Nagaland sung in “Chokai”. Never has this reporter, who is a singer herself, heard such an exciting, melodious voice. Even more exciting were the spectacular vocal manipulations she performed by suddenly trilling from low to high tones and back to low with an unusual choice of note at the end of the phase that created a surprise. At the end of the meetings she sang again; this time using a clear straight voice singing a song she wrote. It was soft and simple telling the tale of the spirit of Servas International. President Geoff Maltby said he was touched by the beauty of Azone Zuvezolu and her talent. I doubt there were many who did not have tears in their eyes.
CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN SERVAS
During the Asian Conference L.V. Subramanian, from India, presented some documents on conflict reso-lution From the Askov Meetings, Servas learned some ideas on Conflict Handling involving the use of tools to:
- listen and understand other ideas
- respect different ideas
- make their position clear
- avoid using confrontational behaviour (such as shouting, attacking etc.),
Also, from the Fontaineroi Joint Meeting in Europe Servas received some basic principles based on:
- Peace,
- Friendship
- Trust
- Transparency
- Democracy
- Social Justice
- Human Dignity
- Reliability
- Accountability
From the Asian participants came inputs on:
- men and women gender con-flicts
- “cast” discrimination
- linguistic comprehension difficulties and misunderstan-dings
- Addressing Cultural differ-ences
- How to speak up peacefully to people who are using confrontational behaviour without being aware of it,
Everybody agreed with the general principles stated, with the need to deepen the knowledge of these tools and to have professional mediators acting in the next General Assembly.
Servas France, Germany, Israel and USA Open Doors to Conversation
Servas France, Germany, Israel and USA raise sights for Servas.They sent eight new principles on which they agree National Groups and EXCO can work well together. Their principles include: •Peace Building, •Good Communication, •Transparent Voting, •Quality Standards, •National Groups Deciding Nominees, •Clear Statutes and Rules, •Good Financial Management •Training in Democracy, •Leadership. Round table discussion of this important paper resulted in strong support for an opening develop-ment education day at the eGA in Latina.
New Servas Personal Journals on the Internet
Some people during the Servas Asian Meeting have wondered how it could be possible to write their experiences and share them with the rest of the Servas world. For example the meeting with the Jains Ashram Community and its Holy Man founder had been so strong and in many ways needed to be shared in a flexible way to the Servas community. Travellers might report on their travel with brilliant descriptions of their Servas experiences, and hosts might decide to “publish” a kind of guest-book of their experiences as Hosts and their own experiences with travellers. One said that, “Whenever I travel as a guest, it is often a joy for me to read the guest book and see other’s experiences. This makes me feel much more motivated to make further Servas travelling or hosting.” One powerful instrument every-body can use free of charge is the so called “blog”. B-Logs are a shortcut for Web Log, and represent a way a personal journal notes, photos, even sounds and music can be shared to all the world making people know how interesting Servas is. Also, it can teach people how to use Servas not just for cheap and superficial travels. There are many “blog” providers. In each country there are local providers. Google itself is offering its how-to blog platform. For an example of such blogs at www.blog.com made by Servas people, have a look at: Omerozkan.blog.com, Geoffmaltby.blog.com,Opening up a blog is quite easy. See hostlistcoordinator@servas.org or treasurer@servas.org Let’s hope that many travellers and hosts will open a community of Servas bloggers. This can be a sign of real innovation and attractive-ness in our community.
S.I. Vice President Offers Planning Assistance to eGA 2006
S.I. Vice President Bibendra Pradhananga attended the Servas Asian Meeting in Delhi and met with members of EXCO. EXCO’s agenda following the Servas Asian Meeting is to work on the planning arrangements for eGA 2006. S.I. Vice President Bibendra Pradhananga has accepted EXCO’s invitation to work with them on these planning arrangements.
Exco and Servas India thank Gary Sealey for his creative leadership and Honora Clemens for her ever-present helpfulness.
This newsletter made using OpenOffice, a free of charge text editor and pdf producer (www.openoffice.org).
