I can’t believe that a month has already passed since I was elected JCI UK Deputy National President and what a great month it has been.  Straight after the election I was lucky enough to hold my first team session with some of this year’s deputy local presidents.  It was great to see so much energy, ideas flowing and such enthusiasm when it comes to planning for next year.  I am really looking forward to working with all of the 2013 local presidents and their council teams.

After that I also had a mentoring meeting with one of my senate mentors.  This proved really productive and helped me to start to put some goals down and work out the very first stages of my plans for 2013.  One of the earliest challenges is to build a strong national board for next year.  I have already had some meetings with members that have expressed interest in being on that team however there are still roles and projects that we need people to get involved with.  If you are interested or have ideas that you would like to share then please do get in touch (details below).

I was also invited to judge at the JCI Yorkshire regional extempore competition hosted by JCI Sheffield.   I was really impressed by the standard of the entrants, including some relatively new members who hadn’t ever taken part in extempore before.  Congratulations to Ilona Alcock of JCI Sheffield for winning the competition.  A really great evening spent in fantastic company.

May also saw me organise and host our first trainer day of the year.  JCI Cambridge did an amazing job of organising a free venue for us and the day was a great success.  The training team are really focussed on delivering training that can assist local chambers with some of the issues that they may face.  We now have six keen trainers that can deliver Discover JCI a course for new members to find out more about the organisation and also ‘word of mouth’ marketing to help members promote not only JCI but also their own businesses.   We are also working as a team to put together a new training session for local councils.
So what is next?  Well I am very much looking forward to attending the JCI Leeds Summer Ball on 9^th June.  There are still tickets left if you want to book click here https://www.eventelephant.com/jcileedspresentssummerballcasinonight   Then it is onto full on preparation for European Conference, get out the union jacks!

Emma Eastwood
Deputy National President
JCI UK
07966 222707
e.eastwood@cityliving.co.uk