Blog

Beginning
We started our work in january 2009. After few emails with Kristiina we
started to shape our strategy. She shared experience from godparenting
method from previous board. We had one more online meeting where we
fixed some details and finally started to communicate. At the beginning
just within support group - first list of group members, introduction,
first instructions and we assigned member organizations for each of us.
We were 7 people there and each of us picked 4 to 5 member organizations
which he/she was interested in and wanted to support them.

Decision taken by heart
I personally was chosing mostly by heart. I remebered some nice persons
which I know from that organization or some nice experience which I have
with them. Now I always feel some warm feeling inside me when I
communicate with that country. Except Iceland  :-)  I wanted to choose
some Icelandic organization because it is simply so far and I don't know
anything about them. I wanted to get to know some people from there and
generally to get to know much more about that country. But we have
decided that it will be better if Aðalsteinn will have all icelandic
organizations because he is simply there and already knows about them.

So I am still waiting for my first (hopefully warm) experience with this beautiful country.

Everybody knows everybody
Currently we are 6 people in the Support group and we try to care about 33
organizations. We are still just in the beginning but I can say it's pretty
hard to communicate with many people. Mostly if they do not respond to our
emails at all or we do not have an actual contact to them. How to get an
answer? How to avoid writing too many questions and how to get a lot of answers?
What type of communication do they prefere? Yes - this is also about
cultural differences. And how to get to know who is the right
responsible person? This can be solved quite easy - everybody knows
everybody in Active! And if you do not know everybody, you know somebody
who knows her or him. So everybody knowing somebody makes all of us
together able to know everybody.

Challange and hope
When I first heard about the support group, I knew I wanted to be right there.
I like to organize internal things and to communicate with people which
have the same aims and values - simply Active people. But I knew that
this is going to be a challange. Many organizations are passive which is
really bad. We will do our best to help them but I do not know in how
many cases we will succeed. But at least we will get feedback and many
useful information for future. I am really curious what is going on with the people
I met years ago, how are they doing and in what situation actually is
their organization - something what represents our common values. I
think there will be very interesting stories about them. I wish, hope
and will do my best to help them continue.

Current members of the support group are:
  - Kristiina Lepa (Estonia)
  - Gabriella Franzen (Sweden)
  - Matus Kovacik (Slovakia)
  - Aðalsteinn Gunnarsson (Iceland)
  - Kajsa Bergwall (Sweden)
  - Aurora Birbilaj (Albania)

If you want to join us, you will be very walcome.

The views on the blogs are the views of the blog writer, and not necessarily the organization. ACTIVE cannot be held responsible for any possible consequences.