We met for the last time yesterday morning to think about where & what next. The aim was to take some of the residual fuzziness out of the GEEP concept, and to allow development to continue. Someone had the idea that GEEP should be a one-stop gateway, which sounded fine, but gateway into what, I wondered. Is it for practitioners someone said. A sharing site suggested another. And so on.
After watching an apiopa video about air pollution workshops in California someone asked whether such videos might be 'GEEPed'. "Yes, they can", someone else said, confirming, once again, that all nouns, even new ones, can be verbed.
Our facilitator talked about the global social service workforce alliance, saying that this had had the same development uncertainties as GEEP, and the same questions to find answers to.
We then had small groups. Ours had the insight that there are already, in some countries, GEEP-like organisations that do, in-country, what GEEP might like to do across them. The UK is one such; the USA another. We wondered if GEEP could usefully be seen as a group of groups; as an institution connecting national GEEP-like groups, with existing global networks, e.g. FEE, ... added in.
In this sense, we felt that there might be a two-fold purpose to GEEP:
[1] to add value to what is now done nationally, and
[2] to enhance international advocacy
Here, a national GEEP would be the representative group to which people and organisations can belong, with possible regional groupings as well arising from all this. Well, we shall see. I seem to remember volunteering to do something as part of this, though what it was ...
Our deliberations were not all über-serious, and there were prizes to be won in a quiz. I have a (rather gaudy and over-sized) stuffed ruby-throated humming bird toy in front of me as a write; this chirrups, though not incessantly. I acquired this by knowing the answer to this question: What is the biggest source of greenhouse gases in the USA?
My winning answer was Donald Trump, and people were impressed by my in-depth knowledge of US current affairs.
Responses
Your entertaining commentaries on GEEP all sound depressingly familiar about these 'love 'em & leave 'em' jamborees. Good that you took a modicum of British humour to lighten the discussions, not so good that GEEP seems to be an organisational solution in search of a whole set of 'wicked' global problems. I'll now keep a sharper eye out for rogue verbs!