Nick's Corner: Let's get virtuous.

After the shocking news of the huge deficit this year and a possible big deficit in next years's budget, everybody feels a little depressed. No trustee wants to come home and tell their chapters, that fees have increased. But if you look at it from a macro perspective, the problem with money we're havong today, is a direct result of our lack of growth:

Everything gets more expensive over time: Plane tickets, food in camps, not to forget the salaries we pay to our staff. If the amount of participants we have, the number of members stay the same, it's an elemetary-school equation to see, that at some point you will have to raise the fees. Rising fees will make CISV more excluseive, possibly reducing the people interested in our organisation, hence we might have even less income in the future. Already now some programmes are experiencing troubles finding participants. Future trustees may decide to reduce IO staff, or host AIM only every 2 years. It's the entry point to a vicious circle. I hate to be pessimistic, but with the stagnation in the number of CISV participation over the last 10 years we're getting no where. It's like in business: Either you grow, or you die. Maybe CISV historians will call the last years with nearly no growth "the lost decade" in an analogy to what happened to Japan's economy. But that term already implies that we will change things today...

I really think, the spiral needs to be spinning the other way around. We need a virtuous, not a vicious circle! And to get that going we may have to make some investments. Hiring people to do communications and education at IO was a first necessary investment. Bringing the website up-todate and other things is a second step. We might have to take some hard decisions, reducing the overheads of our bloated international structure. Let's not be afraid of change. But most of all, we all have to agree that we do want to grow, and commit to it - it may include some tough volunteer hours, too. We believe in our goals and our missions, so why shouldn't more people profit from it.

I'm not offering any practical solutions here now, I admit, but I'm trying to promote a progressive, optimistic, energetic and if you like "growth-oriented" mindset. If you really want to know how much motivation, inspiration and fun it can be to work in a booming NA, just ask our friends in Portugal. Or watch them present their success story in tonights session. Can we bring that spirit to the international level? We really should.