20 Nov 2019

RECENT OF WFDYS BOARD – FRANCE, JULY 2019

Report Summary

Board of 2015-2019 – Final Meeting

Youth Camp, Youth General Assembly and World Federation of the Deaf Congress

Greetings! In this video we will talk about our last meeting of 2015-2019 WFDYS board, the Youth Camp, Youth General Assembly, and the WFD Congress.

Firstly, we all gathered in Paris, France from many places around the world.  Before the meetings began, we enjoyed a few days of relaxation to catch up with each other as we have developed great relationships as a team, working and spending quality time together.

We had an inspection of the camp site, where the COC team hosted us and took us on a tour.  It was really exciting for us because we had worked together for over 2 years to make this camp happen. Our meetings were held over two days.  We reviewed our tasks, prepared the handover package for the new board, organised and made sure everything was set to run well at our YGA.  It was really a productive time in spite of the emotional significance of it being our last board meeting together. Following our board meetings, we held a meeting with the COC to ensure everything was ready such as registration, programs, activities, resources and logistics. Overall, we were really happy to see the progress of the COC.  Everything was very organised and tasks equally shared.

Secondly, the youth camp.  The week of the camp was very exciting for us and the COC as we gathered with 130 participants from 40 countries. It was lovely to see emerging and future leaders meeting each other. On the first day some of participants were nervous about their international sign skills and some were nervous to meet new people. It started off with warm-up activities, a WFDYS presentation, games and a celebration of the French national day, Bastille Day in a fireworks display. Always hard to follow a fireworks show, we then had 5 speakers  – Colin Allen, outgoing WFD President from Australia, Daniel Ocampo from Colombia, Rodrigo Couto from Uruguay, Thomas McWhinney from UK, Aleluya Pena from Spain and Florencia Laurence from Argentina.  All of their presentations focused on topics such as social media tools, human rights, Deaf ecosystems, Deaf identity and much more. The program proper then kicked off with more activities, team bonding, group presentations from the red line project, a culture night, a day trip to the city of Paris to visit the Pantheon and the Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, the world’s first deaf school. Everyone enjoyed the rich history on offer and learnt many new facts. Participants then enjoyed some time to explore the city. Overall, it was really a successful camp – watching a wide diversity of people from different countries make new friends and exchange experiences and skills! Luckily we were blessed with a period of glorious warm Parisian weather!

Thirdly, some of the participants stayed for our Youth General Assembly – yes most of us were exhausted from a big week of camp.  The Youth General Assembly hosted 30 delegates and was chaired by Laura Lesmana Wijay. She did a great job keeping the agenda on track and running the YGA well. We took in a lot of presentations of reports from the past 4 years, new action plans, proposals about internal rules and reports from the WFDYS Independence Working group.  A big announcement followed and we were excited to inform the assembly that India won the bid for the next Junior Camp in 2021, Uruguay won the bid to host the next Children’s Camp in 2022, and South Korea won the bid for the next WFD Congress and Youth Camp in 2023. Congratulations to all.

Moving on to the new board, we received nominations for new board directors for 2019-2023 where all candidates gave their campaign speech. We are pleased to introduce and welcome the new board:

  • Mark Berry, NZ – President
  • Shirley Liu, Australia – Vice President
  • Ashley Bergeron, Canada – Secretary
  • Dario Castelli, Chile – Board Member
  • Fernando Agudo, Norway – Board Member
  • Laure Abdelmoumeni, France – Board Member
  • Rahul Jain, India – Board Member

Congratulations to all!

After the Youth General Assembly, we stayed on and worked during the WFD Congress. We ran a stall selling sunglasses to fundraise and support the future WFDYS camp. We also had opportunities to interact with youth about our work and held daily meetings with old and new board directors, youth regional secretariats, regional cooperation and some YOMs. It was very, very positive and we are looking forward to working together over the next four years. Alongside that we managed to see some interesting presentations and socialise with many people.

In conclusion, so many events and activities jammed into two weeks! We would like to thank all of our YOMs, Youth Regional Secretariats, Regional Cooperations, supporters, WFD and for support from all members of WFDYS in helping us achieve our goals and remain strong for our future generations. We encourage you to keep following our website and Facebook for more updates soon.

The next board meeting will be held in Tbilisi, Georgia.  This will be a very exciting opportunity for the new WFDYS board to join with new WFD board.