stopover.ca

I just added a link to my Facebook profile as well as a link to ReliefWeb into my blogroll (links on the right).

From the Pithy to the Profound

the comments on all of my posts died a horrible death some time ago when I transferred my site to Wordpress … so if you were going to leave a comment, and thought twice when you saw no others, think again.

Be a trailblazer, follow no path but your own, leave a thought …

On an amusing note, I was just emailing back and forth over the last hour with a friend who is on his Blackberry in the Congo right now.

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I just added a link to the Government of Canada Travel Info page for travelers, you can find it under my link at the top of the page ‘A Full Suitcase’, then scroll down to travel agent. While I find this a helpful link, and important information on helping make the decision regarding safey and security while travelling, I certainly do not treat this as Scripture while preparing any team for short term missions. I try to keep in mind that often percieved risk is higher than actual danger.

The only promise regarding a life of mission is that it will be real, raw and life-changing. Although all reasonable care and caution is considered, risks assessed and participants informed for each initiative undertaken, it is important to note that while risk management is very important, it is not the primary method by which we determine our future mission endeavors.

The reality is that the greatest risk for participants in travel to foreign destinations is the same primary risk that all Canadians face every day – auto accidents are the number one issue for injuries for missionaries on the field (Source: Murray Cornelious. Director of Missions PAOC). Additionally, by far, the most dangerous place for Canadians to travel the last couple of years has been the resort towns of Mexico, with several national publications headlining a variety of attacks and injuries on Canadians. It is the unknown and exotic quality of African and other distant travel that tends to elicit a stronger reaction to most people when it comes to risk management. Similar to the fear of international guests afraid to travel to Alberta because of a few SARS cases in Ontario a few years ago; the fear of the unknown (coupled with an all to common ignorance of geography in this case) exaggerated the actual risk.

In keeping with similar organizations involved in missions relief and development – and within the primary foundation of our calling by Christ to people in need – the following determinants will provide the missions committee the appropriate information in order to make an informed determination of the allowable risk:

• Government of Canada travel advisories.

o Intended to provide a helpful starting line to determine future risk management, not to be the determining factor.
o See the next section ‘Travel Warnings’

• Like minded organizations involvement

• Insurance assessment

• Partner perspective

o Need and Opportunities
o Our capacity to meet the need and opportunity

• On Field Host Assessment

o Nature of the danger.
o Frequency of the danger
o Distance of the project/partner from the danger.
o Capacity to mitigate or avoid the danger.

• Scout Trip Assessment

o Missions Committee Member
o Informed and Experienced Leadership Scout Trip Assessment

After weighing all applicable factors, the prudent mission committee will offer a recommendation to the Senior leadership for for written approval. Understanding the risk often allows for better training and risk management strategies.

Travel Warnings

The Government of Canada uses a website to relay information to assess the threat level of a destination. Travel Reports and Warnings.

In short there are four specific categorizations of risk:
• Advisement for Canadians in the specified country to leave
• Advisement against all travel to a country
• Advisement for Canadians in a specified region(s) of a country to leave
• Advisement against all travel to a specified region(s) of a country

The four broad categorizations are also further specified into ‘all travel’ and ‘non-essential travel’. These various categories are combined to form the nine travel warnings found on the Government of Canada website.

It is important that the leadership of a group interested in international work make the determination of their own risk and liability expertise and ability. Once this is determined it is important that board of director approval is written and obtained.
For example, the following recomendation may work for some experienced or entrepreneurial agencies.

The Missions committee is not asking for permission for travel to countries or specified regions where the Government of Canada (GC) advisement is for Canadians to leave, or where the GC advisement is against all travel to a specified country.

The Missions Committee is requesting that the board of directors would:

• Approve travel to countries where there is no advisement against all travel to the country.
• Approve travel to regions where there is no advisement against travel to that region.
• Approve travel through regions where there is an advisement against travel in the specified region in order to reach a final destination in a region where there is no travel advisory.
• Require a travel restriction to international initiatives only when it refers to ‘all travel’, and not to ‘non-essential’ travel

In short, the following nine travel warnings would be taken into consideration, and would be used alongside the determination of partner perspectives, other organizations knowledge, and scout trips to help make a determination on destination selection. The government warnings are not intended to be the final arbitrator of travel approval, but instead are helpful starting points to allow for a reasoned strategy for missional engagement, participant warning/education and risk management.

I finally got around to updating a bunch of old links, check out the page ‘a full suitcase’ for a number of interesting/helpful/timewasting links to cross-cultural and team training materials …

Over the last couple days, I once again found myself teaching at Vangaurd in Edmonton. I had a great time looking at development and internattional issues relating to Partnership. I gave a Readers Digest version of the following article, but I thought I would reproduce it here in its entirety. I am not sure about reprint info, so if I hear anything, I will take it down …

A Single Lucid Moment: Robert Soderstrom

As the plane buzzed back over the mountains, it was now just us and the villagers of Maimafu. My wife, Kerry, and I were assigned to this village of 800 people in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. It looked as if we were in for a true Indiana Jones adventure!

The mountains were dramatic and thick with rain forest. No roads had ever scarred them. We had loaded a four-seater plane with cargo (we would fly out every three months to resupply) and flew for 30 bumpy minutes southwest to the mountain ridges. From the plane, the village looked very much like a shoe-box panorama from a grade-school science project.
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I just got back from a weekend in Ottawa. I helped a friend put on a Short Term Mission (STM) clinic for 40 people, facilitated a missions committee as they worked through their issues surrounding the start-up of short term initiatives, spoke about micro-finance issues to a couple of hundred people, had supper with an old childhood friend, and then spent today in a conference with a dozen and a half leaders in international work. It was a fun weekend.

While I was speaking to the missions committee, I found myself challenging them to engage with the partners they presently have in place. A partner they had just read a report of to a crowd that exhibited evident excitement and interest. They were thinking of international engagement, but as is often the case when people are deciding to take a trip overseas, they make the decision based on fear of danger, ease of the travel arrangements, or a low financial cost. At first blush, these reasons do make perfect sense, after-all – shouldn’t we ease into engagement?

My thoughts were this. It is far easier to raise an extra $1000 per participant, than it is to raise interest in a new inititiative. I think it is important that we engage where we are engaged. This sounds so self-evident that it might be almost foolish, and yet for some reason it is all to easy to think of a STM trip as a ends in itself … this should not be the case. The most effective STM experiences always take place within the context of relationship … extended and continuing … for this is Short term mission, wiht a long term focus.

I just taught a session in Saskatoon where an old friend, Rob Shepherd graciously hosted me. At one of his sessions, Rob talked about the Five Stages of Cross cultural stress (the U- Curve Hypothesis). The point i liked was the 4 possible responses to regression and hostility … namely fight, flight, filter and flex … i have definitely seen a variety of these responses in international travellors …

Stage 1. Expectation and Optimism

Stage 2. Acceptance and Fascination

Stage 3. Frustration and Rejection

Stage 4. Regression and Hostility

Four possible responses:

1. Fight – for change
2. Flight – escape, go home
3. Filter – see only the bad of the present culture
4. Flex – work thought it.

Stage 5. Adjustments, Acculturation and Assimilation.

i am heading to Red Deer tonight to teach a session for Perspectives … a faith based cross-cultural course.  in prepping for the day, i have to use material from the course, some of which i found i did not totally agree.  i hope this is why they call it perspectives, as i will share my own perspective tonight … we shall see

i did it … i joined up … look me up if you want …

well i have officially ended my employ with Westside King’s … great place with a great bunch of people.

Now of course is the time for cliche’s – ‘the future is wide open’, ‘excited about the possibilities’, ‘looking to the future’ … and strangely enough sometimes cliche’s are true …  i suppose they would have to be, in order to have grown so popular …

anyways I am off to Vancouver Island for a few days, time to smell ocean breezes, always a centering exercise for me