November 2016

Hello! Happy belated Thanksgiving to all of you! Apologies for sending this out about a week late- I was too busy eating to pull anything together...

If you're anything like me, the results of the presidential election have you thinking a lot about how you can best impact the world from where you are. I realize I have a number of privileges that will (likely) keep me from being personally negatively affected by the new administration, and this fact means I have a lot less to lose than others might in fighting for the things I believe in (meaning I'm less likely to be persecuted). In case any of the above is not coming out clearly, what I'm trying to say is I want to figure out the best ways to work with communities in danger of being hurt by our incoming president's administration, based on who I am, where I live, and the privileges I have.

That's where CISV and Mosaic come in! I've been in communication with a bunch of chapters over the past few weeks as people are getting geared up for the new year and also thinking about how to best serve their communities. And this has led me to the realization that there are a lot of great things going on in our chapters that I don't know about! Although I've said this countless times (so apologies if I sound like a broken record to some of you), just about anything you do can be a Mosaic! A Mosaic is a structured activity in which you educate or work with either CISV people or non-CISV people in your community, focused on a specific task or issue. If you're reaching out to organizations that work with refugees, we could easily make that a Mosaic! If you're serving food at a soup kitchen or collecting donations for the holidays, that could be a Mosaic! You all are doing such great work in your chapters and I want to harness that energy to both boost your local chapters and share those great ideas with others!

In that light, I'd like to schedule 1:1 calls with chapter representatives over the next few weeks to hear more about what each of you are working on in your chapters and to figure out, individually, how I can best support you. Please click here to schedule a time to speak with me! If there's more than one person from your chapter who would like to talk with me, I'm happy to talk more than once, or more than one person can join the call. If none of the provided times work for you, email me and we'll find another time. I'm a grad student, so my schedule is reasonably flexible (but it's also finals season, so I don't want to open up all hours of the day...).

As always, please let me know any other ways I can support you, and I look forward to connecting soon!

Rachel