International Mosaic Committee
A Short History of the Mosaic Programme
The Mosaic Programme has its origins in an official programme hosted by CISV until 2005, called Local Work. To understand Mosaic, it is fundamental to have an idea of what the experiences of Local Work were and how it evolved into what is currently known as Mosaic.
The Past: Local Work
Local Work was a programme defined as a “long-term and continuous process hosted locally”. It had its roots in “Junior Work” (currently known as its evolved version: Junior Branch) and also in the idea of following-up on the other CISV Programmes. Later on, Local Work evolved to build its own identity – which was to provide theme-based long-term Peace Education continuously in local chapters.
For many years, much effort was put into trying to make Local Work “work” worldwide and, most importantly, to promote the idea that CISV is not an isolated summer-experience, but a long-term educational process. These efforts included creating tools to plan, run, and evaluate educational activities (which included, in the late 80’s the Peace Education Circle); promoting training in all regions using Junior Branch meetings (the strongest network and most obvious public aspect of CISV at the time) and generally promoting the idea of Local Work through a strong and active International Local Work Committee.
Even though these efforts have had a strong impact in the organization as a whole, through planting the seeds of a generation that would want to go beyond the traditional international programmes, it has never corresponded to the expectations and efforts as an educational peace-building programme. Local Work was a massively misunderstood programme, generally thought to be “anything held locally” and poorly hosted in all continents. These conclusions were elaborated upon by the “Mid-Way Status Report 2003”, a document published by the Local Work Committee addressing the status of the programme worldwide.
These conclusions uncovered the need to take another step in the development of the programme (as suggested by the fundamental AIM 2003 “Give CISV a Voice” activity) The International Local Work Committee (ILWC) thought it was the moment to focus on a comprehensive evaluation of the programme. At the AIM 2004, The International Board of Trustees approved the “Re:Think Local Work” Project, a mandate for the ILWC to think, discuss, and come up with solutions for the programme.
Re:think Local Work
The Re:Think Local Work project started with an application for funding from the Peace Fund, a trust-fund connected to CISV that was created to provide funds to projects relevant to the development of the organization. After a long application process and lots of discussion, the project was rejected by the Fund and had to count on an improbable extension of budget given by the newly-elected International Executive Committee to allow the project to take place. With the very strong support of CISV Milan, it was decided that the meeting would take place 3 months later, in Italy.
The “Re:Think Local Work” Meeting had a very well planned schedule that was designed to accommodate the strong and varied leadership styles of the participants. The process was very clear: understand the core of Local Work and its implementation strategies (then known as “Preparation Phase”) and then question and find the “essential contradictions” in the concepts of Local Work. This step included understanding why Local Work was not working and designing something new that could solve the problems and take Local Work (and CISV) to another level.
The year of 2004 was the year of CISV International’s Strategic Planning Process. There was a wide discussion about which direction CISV should go which encouraged existing spirits of change. The specific priorities approved by the board at the time (to work against exclusion, to develop leadership, to cooperate with other organizations, to strengthen existing chapters, and to financially sustain the organization everywhere). They were taken as guidelines of “where CISV wants to go” – which guided the ideas about where Local Work , in its soon to be new shape, should take CISV.
Throughout the process, by taking advantage of the very different backgrounds of the participants present there, the programme was defining itself. The analysis of the problems of Local Work shaped what the new program should be: a defined start and end, more inspiring and flexible framework, more attractive (“change the name?”) and reliable educational quality. These were some of the ideas that helped, after a lot of work, to shape the new programme.
Participants of the Re:Think Local Work Meeting were: Marcos Tourinho, Daniela Calmon, Babsi Enko, Sebastian Merz, Sarah Montgomery, Per Olsson, Maria Dorigatti, committee chair Juan Carlos Lozano, former chairs Bea Baglioni and Jurgen Grielberger, the IEC liason Elenita Gutierrez and Chapter Contact Enrico Quaroni.
Mosaic begins
It was not until the last day of the Re:Think Local Work Meeting that it was decided the new Programme would be called Mosaic, This was only the beginning. Right after the end of the Re:Think Meeting (at that point already starting to be called the “Mosaic Meeting”) another big step was taken: the “Implementation Phase” – basically, everything that had to be done to make Mosaic a reality.
Between November 2004 and August 2005 the ILWC worked intensively to have everything ready for the programme approval at AIM 2005. While the new guides, training programme, and educational process were being worked on, six pilot projects were planned, hosted, and evaluated under the new framework of Mosaic. This material was presented to the Board of Trustee at AIM 2005 for approval.
After a long discussion and many clarifications, the Mosaic Programme was approved and celebrated by CISV International. In the first year, almost 50 projects were requested and a number of trainings were given to ensure quality on all of them – from the beginning...