IC 2005!
Well I'm back in the office for over a week now- apologies for not having posted earlier. For those of you that don't know I was in India for three weeks attending AIESEC International Congress 2005. 700 people from 92 countries meeting for 10 days to discuss AIESEC, important issues affecting the global community, youth leadership and a range of other topics that I won't go into here. I could post up my ENTIRE IC adventure here, but that would be boring as hell, so I'll try and stick to a few key points
Pre-tour: Arriving roughly a week before the start of conference, Mei, Kyle, Tilly and I had the pleasure of touring a little slice of India for about 4 days. With a small, un-airconditioned bus as our primary means of transportation, and the long trips between destinations offering us little to do but look out the window (which was incredible for about the first 6 hours but less impressive after that) we got to know the Ukrainian and Norwegian delegations fairly well, and build friendships with them that lasted throughout the conference, and I'm sure they will last beyond. We saw a small tourist-fueld town called Mandowa (I'm not sure about the spelling) as well as the larger city of Jaipur where we had the opportunity to ride an elephant (which started off fun until we saw that the riders would beat the elephants over the head with Iron rods- then we just wanted to get off)
Pre-meetings: Two days of hanging out with the AP region was always going to be a great deal of fun. I think i enjoyed those first two days the most, since I love any opportunity we get to hang out with AP people. Its a special privlage for us as a western culture to be so accepted by the AP region. We didnt get much work done, but we did get to know each other a great deal. I hope that i will have the opportunity to interact with the AP like this again sometime in the future.
Global Village: We won the best stall! A tremendous achievement for a nation that is constantly reminding itself of the difficulties we experience in trying to articulate a culture. The day was probably the hottest day i have ever experienced, and that is not hyperbole- many people suffered heatstroke. Still, despite the crushing heat the day was fantastic, with all the glitz and glamour you would expect from AIESEC India when they are are called up to bat.
International Congress: What an experience- challenged, inspired, frustrated, euphoric, depressed, naan, curry, toilet trips 4 times a day- the list goes on and on. IC is something that i have looked forward to for a number of years now, and in no way did is disappoint. It was the perfect environment to learn, discuss, argue passionately and steel yourself for the coming years in the knowledge that there are great things afoot just waiting for corageous people to leap to dizzying heights, catch these stratospheric strategies and ideas and then hurl them down to the ground like inspured lightning bolts of 'Ah- now I get it' or 'Wow, that's a much better way of doing things'. I hope that I am one of these people. I hope I am able to bring back and reinvest everything that i learnt at IC so that AIESEC Australia can start really moving forward and escape the crisis its been in for the past 5 years. This is what an IC is all about I think, and if the MC is going to spend the money sending me there then I better provide some return on their investment.
Post IC: Getting back sucks. Its the real world, its work you haven't done piling up. Its other people who experienced different things during that time. However, its also a chance to reflect, to focus, to plan and to implement. In a way, the post IC time, that 2 hours when you first walk back in the office door after you return home, is the most important part of IC because that's your trajectory, your direction, the manifestation of your commitment to what came out of that conference. I think we have done a good job with it so far. We are planning SPM as i write this, and many exciting things are being injected into the agenda that weren't there before. I look forward to seeing how the national association recieves all of this. Hopefully they won't all hate it :)
Ralph
