JCI Reading had the honour of hosting the 2011 JCI UK Inspiration Day. Inspiration Day  is the first national event in the JCI UK calendar. The event has been designed to get everyone back in the swing of things after the holidays and is an ideal way to meet new members from both the local and national boards.  For these reasons it is always hosted as early in the year as possible and has recently been combined with a local chamber Annual Dinner so that members can attend multiple events in the same weekend.

The event started at 11am (slightly later than a standard JCI event but this enabled those coming from London who had attended the JCI London annual dinner the night before a chance to arrive. We decided to follow Allison Cowell’s, National President 2011, Back to Basic’s theme and following many discussions we found that the main reason we joined JCI was because of the people already involved in the organisation. So along with 2 outside speakers we heard from past, present and future members about how JCI has inspired them.

Ismail JCI European Vice President was a special guest at the event and he joined in with all the activities on offer. He gave us an overview of President Kentaro Harada's plan of action for 2011.

After an informative talk from Graham Jones, Internet Psychologist we ran a fun, action pack, competitive team game called 'Roam around Reading' - this got everyone out and about in Reading, it was a little bit chilly but everyone enjoyed themselves and they now know more about Reading and their fellow teammates.

We would like to thank the BJC Foundation as we were successful in our grant application to enabled us to reduce all the ticket prices by £7 per ticket. The BJC Foundation's aim is to help with JCI UK's growth and retention of members.
In the end the Event was such a success that we did not need to claim the grant , while still maintaining the lower ticket price, and have therefore left the funds with the BJC foundation to be claimed in support of Membership growth activity at a future date.

(Written by Carrie Green, Conference Manager and IPP of JCI Reading)