Back home, after a FUNtastic Experience

This weekend has proved to be a very rewarding weekend in Antigua. I’ve enjoyed my stay there, in the beautiful mansion of JCI Antigua Past President Senator Harry. As always I’ve enjoyed the Caribbean hospitality, fellowship, and the limin’.

Glad to have made some new friends, who I hope to be meeting in future events, and ofcourse excited to meet my old friends from the beautiful island Antigua.

I have a good feeling about both the seminars I did (Managing Creativity on Friday and JCI Presenter on Saturday).

I’ve had a great assistant trainer in Past NOM President Faye Edwards and excellent logistic assistance from my very good ‘n lovely Antiguan friends Alicia and Delacy.

Ofcourse I can’t forget to mention the sightseeing tour that I got from Alicia,  Delacy and Brenda. That was very very nice!

Thank you JCI Antigua, Delacy, Alicia, Brenda, Senator Harry and all other members….I really enjoyed it, thanks to you all.

Have to start packin’

Yes I do.
Have to start packing again. I am already enjoying, just thinking about my friends I will be meeting and of course the new friends I will make.
In a few days I will be heading to Antigua, for a short 3-day visit to conduct the JCI Presenter course. I really look forward to visiting Antigua, as I have a lot of friends there and I expect to have a wonderful time there.

The next trip after my Antigua visit will be the JCI World congress, in Hammamet, Tunesia, where I am invited to conduct the JCI Achieve course and one of my own trainingpcourse, Creating Balance.
In my last post I wrote a bit about the Creating Balance  course, which was gaining a lot of popularity. I hope I will be meeting some of the trainers that downloaded the course to conduct it within their LOMs/NOMs to share some ideas that I could use to improve this course.

I can already see myself walking around in Hammamet……hope to c u there 2!

Have a great week!

Be better by sharing your knowledge, your experience and your passion

It’s been two months since I took the time to write something on my blog again. Not that I didn’t have anything to say recently, or that I did not have the time for it, it’s just that I had some kind of writers block. Not that I pretend to be a writer, but it really was a bit hard to get started, even though I had a lot of ideas flying around in my head.

Today I just knew that I had to write down some words, when I got the exciting news from Kamal Dabawala, one of my JCI friends from India. I met Kamal at the JCI World Congress in 2008, in New Delhi. He was the assistant trainer for the JCI Presenter course I conducted there. I’ve experienced Kamal as an very inspiring and dedicated trainer, and I had some valuable learning moments for myself during that course. Kamal and I discussed the training opportunities withing JCI and I proposed to provide some support reaching his next level training certification. By that time Kamal was a CNT  (Certified National Trainer), on his way to the NG (National Graduate level). To reach this next level, Kamal had to design an one hour course. The course he designed was about teambuilding and after designing his course, he asked me to review it and give some feedback. So I did.

Today (august 31th) Kamal received the good news that his application for NG was accepted. Starting today Kamal is the 4th National Graduate from India. A great accomplishment for my friend, Kamal Dabawala, and the thank you message he sent me today give me such a great sense of accomplishment as if I was the lucky one.

Another very nice experience is that in the past two months I received two new requests from trainers around the world to use the Creating Balance training. I developed this 3 hour course two years ago and since then its listed on the JCI Website. In the past two years I’ve received a lot of positive feedback about this course, and I have received emails from various trainers who have downloaded and conducted the course. The first time I received an email about it was in 2007, when a Prime graduate from JCI Canada was planning to conduct the course.

The two most recent inquiries where from JCI Mali and JCI Turkey.
Abou Guindo, the IPP from JCI Bamako from Mali emailed me some weeks ago to inform me that he was going to translate the Creating Balance course in French. This would make it easier for him to conduct it in his French speaking country.
A few days ago I received  an Facebook message from Erdem Türsen, a recent JCI Trainer graduate who will be translating the Creating Balance course in Turkish. I will be inviting Abou and Erdem to share their experience about this course, and I hope I’ll get some feedback which I can use to update it, as I am planning on conducting it at the JCI Worldcongress this year in Hammamet, Tunesia.

This is such great news for me, to see that the time I invested in searching for and reading material to design this course is paying of in this way. Creating Balance seems to have the potential to be a worldwide success, translated in many languages. I truly hope that both trainers and trainees around the world are enjoying this course and will use it to create (more) balance in their life.

I invite you all to download this course from the JCI website and take a look at it. I designed it in the first place to get some balance in my own life. It worked for me. And from the feedback I get from friends around the world, it works for them to.

So be better and create some balace in your life…..

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Training in Jamaica

I have been discussing going to Jamaica for conducting training for quite some time now, with Senator David Knight of JCI st Andrews in Kingston. In November 2008 I was in Ochorios, Jamaica to conduct some training but that was for the JCI West Indies National Convention and the whole discussion has been about conducting training for the members of JCI Jamaica itself.

So, this June I finally went. With a full program, doing JCI Presenter on the 26th and JCI Trainer on the 27th and 28th. This has been a very good experience, with another opportunity to make new friends and exploring other possibilities.

Besides the 3 days of training I also paid a visit to the Best Care Children’s Home for physically and mentally challenged children, that was founded by JCI st. Andrews a few decades ago. It is great to see what impact JCI Jamaica has been creating in Jamaica since they’ve been around.

I’ve enjoyed this weekend, packed with fun, hard working and a nice sence of achievement and ofcourse enjoying Jamaica.
I really have to send a big thanks to the members of JCI Jamaica for the good times I had and for wanting me to go back very soon

….yeah man…no problem..

Puerto Rico 2009

Puerto Rico 2009…..this year’s conference of the America’s has been quite exciting experience, a very good Puerto Rican experience….. Together with JCI Unify member Rajiv Hieralal I arrived in Puerto Rico on May 1st, 5 days before the start of the Conference. We had a whole weekend in front of us and immediatly after unpacking our luggage (11.00 pm) we headed into the city to explore what’s hot…:) On saturday we continued our discovery tour ending the day (night) at one of  ”the places to be” in la calle Fortaleza in Viejo San Juan. Together with our friend from Peru we had a very good time, partying Puerto Rican style till early in the morning….a night full of diversity, from Puerto Rican toVenezuelan, even to Hungarian……we ended the night at club Goddess, having a good time. Sunday I went out with Omar and Sonia from Peru, while Rajiv headed to the beach with Carlos from Venezuela and some other friends from all over Latin America.

So the weekend gave me a fresh start, full of energy for the week long of “work” I had in front of me. I had a very busy schedule, with JCI Presenter on Monday, JCI Trainer on Tuesday and Wednesday, JCI Presenter on Thursday and Managing Creativity on Friday.

As much as it seems, the fun I had during this training compensated at all for the long hours I made, together with Hernando Gomez en Arrey Obenson. As usual the seminars ended with  making a lot of new friends, and for sure some new opportunities for international training projects… I am already looking forward to Tuniz in November and ofcourse..Rosario in 2010. jajajaja