The meeting began by short introductions as we were joined by 6 new members that hope to be interns with UCP-SARnet for the upcoming semester. Warm welcome to our new members!

Updates on Thesis by Adam Euerby: After the brief introductions, the remainder of the first half of our meeting was dedicated to hearing what Adam Euerby had to say about his Thesis results on UCP-SARnet. Adam is a Master's Student at the University of Waterloo working with the Advanced Interface Design Lab. The purpose of this research lab is to study how to create symbiotic relationship between technology and human beings. As Adam stated, one of his tasks was to create social networks to bring groups together to learn. He got involved with UCP-SARnet and the redesigning of our website mid-2010 and in November of 2010 he began gathering survey information statistics on the old website. The new website interface which is what is currently viewed was launched January of this year and Adam has continued studying how this new interface has affected our members and collaborating groups. Though UCP-SARnet is a fairly new organization and there is much that we need to improve upon, having a web space that best serves our purpose is an important step.

A book that Adam suggested to us, which was insightful to his research and contains a concept that depicts what our type of organization can be viewed as is: "Cultivating Communities of Practice" by Etienne Wegner et al. Adam described UCP-SARnet as a Community of Practice which is different than a team; Communities of Practice are not simply goal oriented and interested in getting things done one at a time, there is more of a process of educating, skill development and bringing about change, turning goals into a permanent process rather than a transient task. He closed with some suggestions on how we can continue to evolve our website, using the resources on the website to the best of our advantage and to the advantage of MDG accomplishment. We will have to take into account these suggestions in our planning for the future of UCP-SARnet.

Osee and Dr. Marek updates on their experience over the past 2 weeks in Africa: Dr. Marek and Osee recently attended the World Youth Alliance conference in Kenya. The conference was focused on Investing in the Youth and Economics. Right now there is a lot of growth in the young and educated in Africa but they are not being used as resources in a continent that could use all the human resources that they have. The World Youth Alliance doesn't believe that population control is the solution to poverty and hunger but rather investing in youth and putting the Youth population resources they have to use - not exploiting but rather creating a future for the educated that really want to make a difference and need to be given the chance to. At the conference, Dr. Wosinski and Osee made a lot of interesting contacts and hopefully will be able to follow up soon and get all their new contacts to plug into the UCP-SARnet website. One of the organizations that signed an MOU with UCP-SARnet over this time is Leaders De Demain (Leaders of Tomorrow). They will join as a knowledge partner and hopefully will take over the opportunity portion of our website, the portion that is meant to keep students updated on educational opportunities around the world.

Dr. Marek and Osee also gave us some of the important points of their time in Cameroon. They met with a woman that is president of an organization that works with about 50 orphanages in Cameroon - an organization that works under the ministry of youth affairs of the country. The visit to one of these orphanages was a really heartbreaking experience as Dr. Wosinski recounts. All of the children were collected on the street either abandoned or truly without family. They have very little space that they share in the orphanage and because the orphanage doesn't have good support and funding the people in charge have to search daily for any acts of generosity that can help feed the children; sometimes they go hungry. But despite the conditions, the children are still so enthusiastic - they sing they dance they attend school and they keep uplifted spirits. One of the projects UCP-SARnet hopes to coordinate is an "Adopt an Orphanage" project - finding organizations that are each willing to take one orphanage under their wing and supporting their adopted orphanage in the long term. While in Cameroon, Dr. Wosinski and Osee also met with the Minister of Youth Affairs.

Updates from India: We meant to connect with Birendra on Skype for this meeting but as we could not do so.  Dr. Wosinski gave us the updates. The first semester of the Gandhi College of Social Work has already begun. One of the recent events was to invite about 1000 people from the villages to discuss their expectations of such a college as well as possible community collaborations. This was the first time many of these people were asked their opinion and hopefully empowering these people by encouraging their communication, collaboration and input will be very beneficial to this project as well as to the surrounding communities.  

Closing and Comments for Next Semester: Each member gave some closing comments on what was most impactful to us this semester and what we think should go differently. There was a lot of agreement on the point that we need to focus on prioritizing responsibilities rather than delegating a lot of time-consuming tasks that are not very beneficial to our cause right now. Involvement with the club was a rewarding experience for several of the leadership team members and we hope that with the club so active on campus that we can shift more into action, and balance this with our dissemination of information on leadership, service and the millennium development goals. We hope to be more efficient at focus our resources and our energy on doing things that are the most impactful and the most important to the mission of UCP-SARnet and Forks for Change.  One of the projects that Forks for Change is currently working on securing funding for is holding a "We Day" in April of next semester. So this is one of the projects that we hope to focus on as a Leadership team.

Finally, Dr. Wosinski asked for some suggestions on what topics assigned to his community psychology class would be the most beneficial to UCP-SARnet and to Forks for Change. This semester the projects were all on faith-based community organizations and the results of the student projects will be posted to the website. One suggestion was for the focus to be on how we can use our individual knowledge and skills learned in a classroom to impact the community i.e. through video, through poetry, through dance, through science, through research…. These projects are always captivating and we can't wait to see the results of the hard work of the community psychology class.

Our first meeting of next semester: The first leadership team meeting for the Spring 2012 semester will be an organizational and planning meeting and will take place on Friday, January 13^th, 2012. There is still some work that we will need to accomplish over the winter break such as sending out invitations to the International Leadership Summit.

Happy Holidays to everyone and have a great break. We hope to see everyone back with the leadership team early next year.