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发表于 2005-1-7 21:36:40
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Dear paleo:
Another late answer, it seems that I have to say sorry all the time
From your introduction, I have got the general idea of the movement situation in your side. Thanks for your wonderful presentation! From it, I see we share the same idea: a Grassroots Organization --- Supporting Network system. It is really a efficient way to prompt our work! One person can grow up in the grassroot organization and parcipate and do more in the network to help the grassroots organization.
And another interesting point is there are a lot of middle-school groups in your movement while in China the middle-school group is really scarce due to the China university entrance rule --- only around 50% of all applicants can enter university for further study. The China's huge population and developing economy play vital role. In this situation, middle-school students have to devote themselves to the study in stead of participating the society acitivities. It is also some kind of culture difference.
And in our network, we focus more on the environmental issues and it seems in your side you have invovled into more wide and deep area. For example, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, I suppose it is a government plan or a plan by the official organization under the control of goverment. China's environmental organizations are very young and have no capacity to involve much into the goverment plan and change their ideas.
Then, I have a very interesting question, accoring to your knowledge, when did your movement and organization are found?
As I just said, China environmental organization are all young. The earliest formal environmental civil organization is founded in 1994. It is one kind of negative factor since it means they lack experiences and influence. However, I have to admit that in the past four or five years, Chinese environmental organizations developed much more better than before. It is a very exciting situation since we can know a better future is not only a dream. In the years of 2000-2004, the numbers of environmental organizations increased several times. It became a new green trend. I don't know what is the reason, but it is truth. In the early 1990s, Chinese people know little about environmenal protection except some experts and officials. Now everyone in the city know this concept although they don't know what to do and whether they should do something while the situation in the rural area is still very severe...
OK. As you suggested, please open our past discussion to all people and please tell the web address you post and we can continue our discussion openly in the future...
Best Regards!
Wu Haoliang
wuhl@green-stone.org
2004-06-08
^^^^^^^^2004-05-18 07:37:22 ^^^^^^^^^
>Don't worry about the delay in replying, I know what it is like when uncontrolable events show up and disrupt plans.
>Very interesting, I see that your organisation apears to be doing very well. I wish I could read simplified Chinese (online translators don`t work very well).
>
>Elaine was contacted through the Youth Action Gathering (YAG) and has become very involved and contributed a lot, she is currently also working on the next YAG.
>
>I agree that it is difficult to find strong capable people with varied skills (and it is even harder to find ones with a lot of free time). It is people that are the basis of society they decide its caracter and its future and it is people who allow or create the basis of any social movement.
>
>A few people can make a big difference in how well an organisation works especially if they are in positions of responsability or power. I have found that one of the largest challenges is having enough information to identify good candidates for a position, this is especially true in elections (if they are not carefully run), though they are the most effective way of allowing everyone to have input.
>
>In the SYC (at least what I have seen of it) there is a very strong emphasis on grass roots organisation. In the local activities of SYC Ottawa the experienced people have acted in a role where their main job is to, provide resources and facilitate decision making and work and suggest ideas, but most of the actual drive, input and work is expected from everyone. This also makes it easier to provide extra opertunities for people to grow in involvement, skill and capability.
>
>One good example of this is the organisation behind the Youth Action Gathering; a group of around six 14-20yr old students form the planing commitee. They direct the overall aim of the project as it developes, clear and expect material and are involved in everything from hiring the employee for the project, to giving presentations on it, asisting in fund-raising, logistics and running the camp -in summary they are a key element to planing and implementation of every area of the project.
>
>Of course, they rely on and are greatly helped by the knowledge and advice of the SYC employees and from the work of the summer student and full time employee hired for the project. Which also could act as a safe-guard if a couple of the people went crazy.
>
>I will quickly point out that when it comes to official direction and high-level redistribution of funding, decisions are made by an elected board consisting of youth from across Canada.
>
>Regarding Campaigns:
>
>Most of the projects refered to at the BBS were done by SYC-Ottawa (14-20yr old group) as part of local relatively low level activities that tied into larger campaigns. These were good training excercises and involved making and distributing material and holding some small demonstrations. The ones last year I worked/attended on were timed to co-operate with groups working on the following campaigns:
>Stop ESSO campaign (by Green Peace)
>Buy Nothing day (by Adbusters)
>Fossil fools day (SYC and Green Peace)
>Anti-Nuclear power demonstration (against the CNA by Green Peace, an old amalgamated anti-nuke organisations and SYC)
>
>There are also several larger campaigns organised by the SYC directly (a good example is currently going into effect, it is a campaign to reform the publically owned Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and pressure them into investing responsibly. They were investing in the Tabacco industry, Oil companies and a bunch of other unethical stuff).
>If you want specific information on any of these campaigns, I should be able to track it down for you.
>
>
>I personally prefer to work on longer term more general campaigns. This is why I am involved with the Community Youth Action Project (CYAP). History has shown that reforms normally only happen when the majority of the public is already well informed and support them, it is the public viewpoint that almost always moves first.
>
>It is the shift in views and priorities and the goal of a culture where people know enough about what is going on and care enough to take action to help plan for a better future and a better world that must be worked towards.
>
>In some ways this is the goal of the CYAP and the Youth Action Gathering even if people don`t realise it yet.
>
>If it is all right with you I would like to open our past discussion to other people in the community?
>-Jonas Weselake-George
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>\"Dear Jonas:
>
> I feel so sorry that in the past two weeks I was engaged in the mid-term exmination and couldnot take some time to reply to you on time.
> Thanks for your wonderful explanation! The Youth Camp is really interesting idea and I can imagine how it works -- future commnication is built on the foundation of the friendship of members of this camp. Actually we have also similar mechanism so called trainning camp. But it is as important as yours, it's only several weekend training classes of volunteer representatives from various student environmental groups.
> In China, all of student environmental activities are carried out mainly by student volunteers instead of any employee, while sometime some program coordinator of environment NGOs will give some assistance or direction in certain cooperative programs.
>
> Considering how our organisation handles communication and recruitment, I would like to introduce my group fisrtly. My group called Green Stone, or sometime we give it a full name: Green Stone Students' Environmental Action Network, is definitely a student environmental groups' cooperation network instead of single group. The students' enviroment groups exchange ideas, share information and material resources in this platform by different means for example semester forums, newletters, website and bbs,training camps etc. Meanwhile we coordinates various environment protection activities worked by students' groups together.
> In this process, our BBS -- web forum actes as a central role. All activities' information is publicized in the board and a lot of participants posted their opinions or suggestions following the informaion. It works in the same way as Yen-Rej's BBS. But we use it very frequently and in the past one year, nearly 15,000 posts have been submitted and viewed more than 200,000 times totoally according to our statistics system. You can view this bbs in http://bbs.green-stone.org, but it's a pity that it is a Chinese system. You can only get a general picture from it. We use it since it is the most efficient and cheap way for us. Telephone fees after frequent communication can be a huge burden but Surfing internet is far cheaper. Every two weeks chief members will have meetings in our small office while some other meetings are held when necessary. BBS, telephone, meeting, all of them build up our communication system.
> But until now, our network works only in one city- Nanjing -it means south capital:-) and under expansion now, so it is easy and efficient. Another group network - Green Student Forum, based on Beijing - capital of China, focuses on the cooperation network nation wide and it is far more difficult. It need the coordinator to take more time to deal with this network with excellent techniques and brilliant mechanism. But it is still not very successful. In my opinion, it should develop into a professional organization with some employees and choose appropriate goal -- devoting more to information platform in stead of carrying out some other activities. Otherwise it cannot achieve success.
>
> Concerning the recruitment, it is a severe problem. We can find a lot of volunteers in the activities easily but it is not easy to find out an excellent, responsible and active guy. One excellent leader is the soul of one organization. So we let main members vote in leader election, the elected leaders will choose appropriate principals of various departments from all volunteers. The members of school student group come from the recruitment in the campus, and as a cooperation network our members of this network organization are chosen from the members of these member groups.
>
> You know that Elaine in the yen-rej bbs? Maybe your good friend:-) She is very active.
> Maybe you can introduce a little bit your wonderful projects briefly for example anti- GMO food movement -- I've seen it from your bbs. I feel very interested since maybe I can get some brilliant ideas from your activities. I wish it will not take you too much time...
>
>Best Regards\"
>
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