jci london forward magazine january

Issue 1January 2015

forward

Start off the year rightGet the deeds on how to better yourself in 2015

Our top 10 tips on public speaking Meet the team of JCI London

Hello January,

I have signed up to taken on the ‘ultimate challenge’ in 2015, to lead the largest chamber in the JCI UK. After joining JCI London back in September 2010. I have taken on a variety of board roles from local level (JCI London) to National board. Taking on a director role is the stepping stone to building yourself up to President role if you decide to follow the JCI career leader. Which take you right up to World President level!

I have thoroughly enjoyed all my directors’ roles due to the people I’ve met, challenges, and leadership lessons I’ve learnt in my JCI career. Don’t worry, I have laughed along the way and developed friendships that will last a life time.

I’m the President but to run a chamber as large as London with under 100 members!

I can’t do this without a team. There are a lot of things said about teamwork. There is one thing that remains, no matter what team you are in. It’s about commitment to the process. At our AGM last 12 members stood up to be counted. To take on voluntary role as board of director role, some members of my team have less than year membership. I was a member for less than 2 months when I decided to take on director’s role. Our journey certainly will not be perfect but it will be ours. There will challenges, lessons to be learnt and fun time along the way.

president‘s letterBE BETTER IN 2015GET GOING NOW

I believe right now that world needs leaders we can follow. JCI London provides the youngprofessionals the opportunity to develop themselves as

‘leaders of today’.

“

”

Forward Magazine Issue 1 January 2015 3

You will get to meet my team soon at our January Kick Off- save the date Monday 19 January. This is the culmination of hard work, by a group of young professionals. We have one goal in mind. Commitment to the process of developing ourselves as leaders. Making a difference in the London community where we work and live.

I believe right now that world needs leaders we can follow. JCI London provides the young professionals (in every sector including stu-dents), the opportunity to develop themselves as ‘leaders of today’. We have some great ambitions to change our communities locally and globally and we would like to invite you on that journey.

This year marks the 100th year of JCI organisation, founded in 1915 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA by Henry Giessenbier a young banker. Henry created a movement to bring about civic improvements and giving young people a constructive approach to civic problems. Junior Chamber International (JCI) as we now known today was founded with eight other countries in 1944.

How many organisations do you know that have been around for 100 years?

This year JCI London wants to continue and ensure we are around for another 100 years. I want to invite members to help re-write the script and build the legacy for the next 100 years.

JCI London in 2015 areas of focus:

• Growth in terms creating the foundation for two more new chambers

• Membership growth (300 members)• 5 strategic partners (include City of London Mayor)

My team have only ‘one year to lead’ and we have a lot to achieve in a short space of time.

If you are interested in finding out more why not get in touch. I’m always up for meeting for a coffee.

Soraya Bowen

a month with JCI London

8 Food poverty The one pund a day challenge and the implications of food poverty today

12 The secret of making a habit How to make the best of your new year‘s resolution

16 JCI Canary Wharf President‘s letter and all about TEDxCanaryWharf

20 JCI London to Ghana! Brighton your Corner Project

22 Be Better Our top 10 tips on public speaking

24 Meet the JCI London Team of 205 A short introduction to the whole team

26 Thirsty Thursday Our favorite networking event


contents


The value of an idea lies in the using of it.

- Thomas Edison


Food poverty is becoming a prominent issue in our society. The rising prices are affecting everybody and people who don’t have a lot suffer to hardest from these changes. In order to understand the inpact food poverty has and how one can survive with only one pound a day JCI UK members have created and start-ed to follow through the pound a day chal-lenge for the past few years.

What is this challenge?

The challenge lasts one week during January and it means that participants are only spending one pund per day on their food. They are not allowed to use and condiments or other stock items out of their kitchen and soely reply on their purchased groceries for the challenge. Of course everything can also be purchased at once and spread out. That is what most participants tend to go for as it is the most economical option.

The money that the participants would nor-mally spend on their groceries is donated to charity. Emphasising that the challenge is not only to raise money to end food poverty but is also there to make people understand the struggles that come with it.

Why is this challenge important?

As stated it encourages everyday people to get involved with an issue at the base level. Food poverty is something that affects thou-sands of people in the UK alone. A country

that should be able to end it. However as the prices rise and wages don’t match up more and more families are forced to live on less money. However, food is not only a basic need to still our hunger, but the nutrients in it are important to maintain a healthy population.

This challenge has shown again and again that food poverty does go in hand with poor nutrition. On a tight budget of one pound a day, fruit and vegetables are hard to buy and the recommended five a day simply cannot be met.

What makes people want to join?

The challenge is what the name suggest a challenge - why not try to live on less? It is a stand against food poverty, it may teach you something and it will also give you an idea on

how you can save on food after completing the challenge.

This is why one of our members, ThiRi was inspired to take the challenge:

“I decided to take The Challenge as I have witnessed poverty in my own country. I have a story to share. It was years ago, I placed the leftover of my lunch box under a lamp post for stray dogs in front of my shop. While I was sit-ting down and waited for the dog to come and eat, I saw that two boys aged around 7 years walked by and picked through the leftover food. It is something that is a great importance as I believe the challenge is something that will raise awareness locally about the chal-lenges people face.It was because of my own exposure to poverty that I wanted to take part the “The Challenge”.”

The picture on the right shows the grocery chart of this year’s president Soraya Bowen at her shopping trip to ASDA.

“This challenge has shown again and again that food poverty does go in hand with poor nutrition. The recommended five a day simply cannot be met.”

FOOD POVERTYPOUND A DAYCHALLENGE


Here are pictures from this year’s participants and their meals.

1. Lory - My breakfast this morning: porrige with grated dark chocolate and banana. Yummy! 2 days to go. Already lost almost 2kg. Anybody else loosing weight? I feel I eat a lot but get very hungry smile emoticon weird things happen tongue emoticon oh and I still have a lot of food left.2. Thi Ri’s lunch3. Thi Ri - So its the start my £1 a day challenge and here’s my fuel for the day.4. Rice+corn, lentils and green beans.5. Soraya’s reciept

Taking it a step furtherAlice Biggar from Southhamton has taken this challenge a step further and has lives on one pound a day for a whole month.She has documented her very interesting expericence on her blog: http://www.challengealice.com/

Here are her words and final thoughts on the challenge: “I began this challenge as a personal test of curiosity and willpower and as the month has progressed I’ve learnt a great deal about food poverty (something I had always associated with the third world) in the UK. It’s been an incredible month for me in many ways and I feel very fortunate that I can return to life without these constraints but for many this is not simply a chal-lenge but something that must be faced every day.”- Photo taken from Alice’s blog - definetely check it out!


Especially at the start of the new year we make plans to change ourselves and adapt new behaviours such as eating healthy or get-ting fitter. These new chores, exercises, eating healthy and getting work done would be so much easier if they ran on autopilot. Creating new habits makes these much easier and will take out the struggle. Here are some tips on how to get to that point. In the beginning it will take discipline and to be honest it will take ef-fort to maintain these habits. Here are our tips on creating new habits and making them stick:

Generally speaking it takes three to four weeks to make a habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial condi-tioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. Moreover a month is a good block of time to commit to a change and make it fit into your calen-dar. Likewise consistency is critical if you want to make a habit stick. If you want to start exercising, go to the gym every day for your first thirty days. Only going there a couple times a week will make it harder for you to form the behav-iour into a long-lasting habit that will no longer feel like a chore. Activities you only do once every few days are trickier to lock in as habits.

However don’t try to completely change your life in one day or take too much on at the same time. It is easy to get over-motivated and take on too much. If you wanted to study two hours a day, first make the habit to go for thirty minutes and build on that. Also start-ing with one habit at a time can help you not to get overwhelmed by the different habits you are trying to form. Especially around two weeks into your commitment it can be easy to forget and loose some enthusiasm. Place

reminders on your desk, in your apartment or somewhere you will see it every day at least once to execute your habit each day or you might miss a few days. Since if you miss one day or more it defeats the purpose of setting a habit to begin with.

The more consistent your habit the easier it will be to stick. If you want to start exercising, try going at the same time, to the same place for your thirty days. When cues like time of day, place and circumstances are the same in each case it is easier to stick. Also it can help to get a buddy that will keep you motivated and hold you accountable.

If you are giving up something in your habit, make sure you are adequately replacing any needs you’ve lost. If watching television gave

you a way to relax, you could take up medita-tion or reading as a way to replace that same need. Don’t expect all your attempts to change habits to be success-ful immediately. It may take you several tries to really start forming the

habit. Go by trying your best, but expect a few bumps along the way.

Spend more time with people who model the habits you want to mirror. A recent study found that having an obese friend indicat-ed you were more likely to become fat. You become what you spend time around. Also write your habit down the piece of paper with the resolution on it itself isn’t that important, however writing that resolution down is. Writ-ing makes your ideas more clear and focuses you on your end result. And last but not least don’t worry about all the things you “should” have as habits. Instead tool your habits to-wards your goals and the things that motivate you. Weak guilt and empty resolutions aren’t enough.

“Generally speaking it takes three to four weeks to make a

habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier

to sustain.”

THE SECRET OFMAKING A HABIT


We are the Junior Chamber of Canary Wharf, a sister chamber to JCI London and one of the chambers planning to make it BIG in 2015!2014 was really a successful year for us under the leadership of Michela Pascucci (Past Pres-ident and Founder of JCI Canary Wharf),we recruited some strong members and had fan-tastic events. From a massive turnout of 80+ attendees at our Official Affiliation Party to JCI Canary Wharf taking the lead in hosting the National Convention! And what better way to end the year than to receive 5 National Awards for our hard work and dedication!

2015 is a new year and we have already elected a proactive, motivated and ambitious Council Team. It’s really a wonder how all of us have very similar goals for JCI Canary Wharf and what it would take to achieve them. Dur-ing the month of January, we started to set the foundations for the year to come with multiple Council Meetings to build our team bond and several training sessions such as Branding/

Sustainability and Project Management to equip us with key skills. We have even se-cured the date for the first TEDxCanaryWharf event for this year! The TEDx team are lead by two lovely and dedicated Council members, Danielle and Karolina! We are looking forward for this debut TEDx event to being a true suc-cess.

I, as President of JCI Canary Wharf, am very confident in my Council team. They all share the same level of ambitious and I can see their determination to achieve our shared goal for JCI Canary Wharf. We do want to become one of the leading self-development organisation in Canary Wharf and London! It has been a great start to the year and I can tell that we are en route to great events and projects lead by great people. This time next year, I will have a smile on my face when looking back to what we have achieved together, because we are JCI Canary Wharf and we are always #onest-epahead.

Nabiil ImritPresident 2015, JCI Canary WharfOn behalf of my AWESOME Council Team

JCI CANARY WHARFPRESIDENT NEWS


by Danielle Nanton

Background:Many people are familiar with TED talks, the 15 minute talks related to ideas worth sharing. TEDx events continue that idea and ethos into a more local area and experience and last year Karolina and Danielle were able to secure the licence from TED to be able to put on the event TedxCanaryWharf.

Previous involvementIt has really been an almost inevitable pro-gression when it came to Danielle’s pro-gression within the Tedx ecosystem. She started by watching the talks on youtube. This progressed to attending her first Tedx, TedxOxbridge, which took place at the Said School of Business at Oxford University, and finally to partaking in the Tedx sponsorship team with TedxSquareMile 2013, she still has some of the business cards with the event and job title which were fully in-kind donated by moo.com !

CurrentFrom involvement in TedxSquaremile to applying for and obtaining the licence for TedxCanaryWharf the two Directors of Tedx-CanaryWharf, Karolina and Danielle were excited and nervous about the first official TedxCanaryWharf meeting which took place in January of 2015 at the Barclays Head Of-fice in Canary Wharf. The TedxCanaryWharf team leaders and team members are so on the ball and filled with high-caliber individ-uals that we are really looking forward to putting together the event.

FutureWe are currently looking to increase aware-ness of the event and any help is greatly ap-preciated. We are also looking for sponsor-ship connections so please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any suggestions.

TEDXCANARYWHARF


Our JCI London to Ghana project started in April 2013. This was when our very enthusi-astic and hardworking members decided to make a positive impact on Ghana’s commu-nities by fundraising £5,000. This money was used to provide 1,000 Malaria bed nets for the village of Tamale, equipment that had the potential to save 2,000 lives. Besides it being a real challenge “Nothing but Nets” was also a great learning curve, and allowed our mem-bers to push their boundaries and expand their horizons. The project was such a success that it even won an award at the national convention 2014 for Best UN MDG Project.

At JCI London we want to continue to help and create a positive impact in Ghana’s community.We believe that every child deserves the right to a good education, no matter where they live in the world. But with 50% of the world’s chil-dren of primary school age living in conflict-af-fected areas, this right is sadly not a reality. Therefore we are concentrating on improving the reading culture of schoolchildren in Ghana to give them the opportunity to play a real and effective part in the economic, social, political and cultural lives of their community.

In line with the UN Millennium Development Goal No. 2, our “Brighten your Corner” project will help to deliver a better primary education for the children at LA Primary School in Ac-cra, Ghana by providing books and e-learning material for their library.

From our projected fundraising total of £7,000, we aim to source 1,300 books; this will open up a new world of learning for the 650 pu-pils. We are planning on raising this money by securing corporate sponsorship as well as organising fundraising events. World Book Day on the 5th March, and the global week of education running from the 4th to the 10th of May: are key dates in helping us to raise awareness and generate some money for our cause. We are also hoping to secure some book donations from schools, Universities and publishers.

And then for those who want to, the second part will consist of delivering the books in person to the school at the end of September this year and helping the students uti-lise those new resources in their daily lives.

This will be a challenging but very rewarding project. It is an opportunity for all of us to help in a worthwhile cause whilst developing an impressive range of skills. There are various positions available within the following areas: marketing, fundraising, sponsorship, logistics and finance. Not only will you develop lead-ership and team management skills, you will also meet interesting people along the way and have the opportunity to visit a fascinating country.

If you want to get involved contact me directly at [email protected].

“We want to continue to help and create a positive impact in Ghana’s community.We believe that every child deserves the right to a good education”

JCI LONDON TO GHANA!

BRIGHTON YOUR CORNER PROJECT


BE BETTEROur top 10 tips on public speaking The art of public speaking is not easy to master and often people fear not only their speech but also the delivery of it. Here is how to get towards mastering the perfect speech.

1. Tell great stories. Why? Stories are and have always been at the centre of human interaction. They have the power to convey more and make people retain the heard infor-mation. Think about stories you can tell that are interesting but also have a lesson learned in them or connect directly to the topic in your speech.

2. Do NOT read it! Neither from your lap-top, or notecards. Yes, speaking in front of an audience can be nerve-racking, but give the audience the attention and the respect they deserve. Practice your speech and know what you’re talking about it. If you should ever find yourself losing my train of thought, remember that your audience does not know what you have planned and will not know if you missed a point or a certain word - so keep on going.

3. Relax! You are your our own worst critic. If you forget to read a sentence off your notes, it’s doubtful anyone will know. If you skip forward to the next image on the projector by mistake, no one’s going to run you out of town. Don’t worry. It’s not life or death, it’s just a speech.

4. Know Your Audience To whom are you speaking? If they’re colleagues, they probably want to learn something from you. If they’re friends, they’re likely looking to be enter-tained. If it’s a judge, well, he or she wants to be convinced. Know who your audience is and tailor your speech and delivery to them. Analyse them and give them what they want!

5. Slow Your Roll One of the biggest indicators of nervousness is the lightning-fast talker. You might have the best speech ever written, but if no one can understand what you’re saying, it doesn’t matter. Pace yourself and speak at a normal (or even slightly slower) pace when you’re speaking publicly.

6. Keep It Short, Please Know what’s expected of you and deliver that - and no more. We’ve all been tortured by a speaker who goes on and on, caring little for the audience’s interest or comfort level. Don’t be one of those speakers - always leave them wanting more.

7. It’s NOT About You The more you can take the focus off yourself, the better. After all, it’s not likely you’re being asked to give a speech/presentation of your life story. So concentrate on the message and find freedom in just being the messenger.

8. Fake It ‘Til You Make It The old saying “fake it ‘til you make it” is actually pretty good advice. Even if you have zero confidence in yourself, try acting like you do. The longer you fake it, the more comfortable it will feel, until, you really are a confidence machine.

9. Lead with your best stuff. Make an entrance. Put forth your Big Point right away. Start with your best story, your funniest joke, your guiding theory. Don’t make them wait to see you shine. Grab your audience from the get-go.

10. Plan your finish. Wrapping up can be the hardest part of a talk because you’ve either used up all of your good stuff, you’ve gone over time, or you have space to fill. Hold on to a closing gold nugget so you can leave on a high note either way.

MEET THE TEAMA short introduction to the team members

Soraya BowenPresident

Rafael Tselikas-Mauro

Deputy President

Dexter DashImmediate Past

President

NinaYordanova

Marketing Director

Zack YoungBusiness Director

Loredana Toader

Training Director

Adeola Akintimehin

International Director

Nisaa JethaCommunity Director

David KhannaStrategic Partnership

Director

Chloé BostSocial Director

Iman KayaliExecutive Director

Immaculate Birungi

Membership Director

Thi Ri AungFinance Director

Marise Westbroek Peace One Day Director

Netwoking

every

month

Next issue coming February 2015

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jci london forward magazine january

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