Dear Ryu
It was real pleasure to receive your mail.
Over these four years that past after the Academy,
my thoughts went very often back to these wonderful days in Japan.
Thanks to Academy and people whom I met there, my view to the world changed in many ways.
I am especially thankful to you for your warm friendship and I am glad to have friend like you.
It is really great to hear that you will give seminars for you members.
Sharing your knowledge is one of the greatest things that you can do in your life and of course,
it helps others to get more from JCI and help community.
About my experience:
1.Why I choose to join JCI?
Actually when I join JCI, it was year 1995 and I didn’t have any idea what it really is about.
In this time JCI was quite young in Estonia (6 years) and only thing that I knew,
was that it gives me valuable contacts that I needed.
So I think that contacts were the most important argument for me in this time to join JCI.
2.Activities and projects:
Most important project that we have in JCI Estonia is project called Rat Race.
It was established in 2002 and I was first project manager who started this event.
Rat Race is well known over the country and is best money rising and PR project that we have in Estonia.
Thought the years all TV channels and newspapers have been interested in broadcasting this event
and all people know it very well.
In recent years JCI members from Latvia, Finland and Sweden came to look for this project, to start it in these countries.
The idea of Rat Race is that office people will run short distance (approx.1 km)
through the old town in costumes or office suits,
holding their suitcases and mobile phones and having fun.
The official website of this event is http://www.ratrace.ee/ (unfortunately only in Estonian),
you can find it from Facebook as well.
Another great project that we had when I was president was cooperation project with Rotary, AIESEC and Junior Achievement.
The idea of project was to start mentoring across different organisations.
One good project to recruit new members was „Training bus“
– idea to make one- and two days public trainings in towns were we had local chapters.
Through these trainings we gave some valuable training to people who were not members of JCI and in the same time made promotion to JCI.
One international event, which was based on the values of JCI, was trade mission for JCI Switzerland.
It gave lot of close contacts in personal level and was followed by some trip to Switzerland.
3.JCI had changed my life in many ways.
Most important, it changed my view to all world and gave understanding of helping society.
Understanding that you are not alone in this world and to serve people is great value.
You can do so many good things with very small efforts. There are so many people who will be really grateful.
Thanks to JCI I got skills how to be a trainer
and this is really great knowledge and of course I got so many good friends over the world
and this is one of the best things you can get form JCI.
Wish you all the best and many great JCI experiences in the future!
Your buddy,
Margus
遠藤“Ryu”隆一