The Friendship Force of Los Angeles | ||
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Background | ||
| A committee, appointed by FFLA vice- president Ed Lawrence, consisting of Bob Aronoff, Connie Kramer and Zelda Arditte, met to discuss criteria for selection of ambassadors for outbound exchanges. The goal: to choose the best possible ambassador group and to encourage home hosting and other FFLA involvement. This required serious attention to the history of our club and consideration of the many members whose hard work and commitment to our goals have been responsible for our club's growth and accomplishments. We talked about the increasing difficulty of finding members who will say "yes" when asked to participate and about making fifty phone calls to secure hosts for inbound groups of twelve people. We worried about the decreasing number of applicants for outbound exchanges and the dilemma of members who repeatedly serve as ambassadors but do not home host or play an active role in the work of our organization. We also considered the danger of becoming a "clique" club, a frequent occurrence when a small group does most of the work and most of the hosting and most of the traveling. These suggestions were reached by consensus. Our focus was always the good of the club. | ||
Goals | ||
| 1. | We believe that selection of members for outbound travel should be directed to choosing the best possible group of ambassadors to represent us. | |
| 2. | We want diversity in age, economic status, race, religion, culture, etc. | |
| 3. | We want to reward our hard-working, actively participating members. | |
| 4. | We want to recruit new people from the community to join us in our work to carry on the mission of FFLA. | |
Recommendations | ||
| We recommend that each outbound exchange director (E.D.) reach out to the community-at-large to widen the circle of applicants for the exchange by mean of advertising, publicity or contacts with community organizations. A larger pool of potential ambassadors hopefully will increase the opportunity to secure a more representative group and bring "fresh blood" into the club. | ||
| The E.D. must avoid the temptation to choose friends and coworkers within FFLA as fellow travelers or committee members and avoid "filling up" the exchange, i.e. accepting otherwise unacceptable applicants, in order to earn the "free ticket”. While tempting, this is an unworthy act. Atlanta will give E.D.'s with less than 20 travelers a partial payment of the ticket or induction price. This should make the "free ticket" less of a factor than in prior years when recruiting 19 ambassadors earned one nothing but 20 earned a "free" ticket. | ||
| The selection committee, through applications and interviews, must search for people suited to that particular exchange experience. Someone who might be a wonderful ambassador to England may be unsuitable for an exchange to Kenya. | ||
| Is the applicant flexible? Does the applicant have her/his own agenda? Will the applicant work with fellow ambassadors before, during and after the exchange. A world traveler is not necessarily a good ambassador. | ||
| After the applicant has passed the first portion of the selection process and is considered good ambassador material, we reach the question: which of these otherwise-acceptable applicants should we select as ambassadors? We need to establish priorities. | ||
| The committee suggests a point system based on the applicant's record for the three years (36 months) before the exchange departure and derived from the answers to the following questions. | ||
| 1. | How many times has the applicant been an ambassador? | |
| Our goals here are three-fold: (a) we need to limit members participating in many consecutive exchanges because this tends to create an inner circle or clique; (b) we want some new members on every outbound exchange; and (c) we want to encourage those who have been involved in the club but have yet to travel as Ambassadors. The point system considers these issues by assigning a negative point value to those who have been on two or more consecutive exchanges in the previous 36 months and a positive point value to new members and to other members who have never traveled with the club. | ||
| We suggest minus 1 point for each consecutive outbound exchange after two and plus 2 points if this will be a first outbound exchange. | ||
| 2. | How many times has applicant home hosted an inbound FFLA exchange? | |
| This is an all-important goal. The underlying philosophy of the committee is "no home host, no travel" but of course there are exceptions. | ||
| We suggest 5 points for each time a member serves as a home host and 1 point for each two days as a host. | ||
| 3. | How active a participant has applicant been in the work of FFLA? | |
| There are many ways of participating and they are different for each member. We do not attempt here to value these efforts except in terms of the need to establish criteria for ambassador selection. Ambassadors are home hosted for 7 or 14 days; therefore, day hosting one day, while valuable, does not equal even one week's hosting. We can encourage home hosting by placing a high value on this task, rewarding home hosts with points that will be considered in the selection of ambassadors. Committee work, both in exchange and general club work, is essential for our club to function. We can encourage this work by rewarding our active members. | ||
| We suggest 1 point for each two days as a day host, 2 points for chairing a committee and 1 point for serving as a working committee member. | ||
| 4. | How do former exchange directors rate this applicant? | |
| The E.D. shall determine which previous outbound exchanges the applicant has participated in and should contact all previous exchange directors for an evaluation of the applicant as an ambassador. The committee considers this very important. If the experience of previous E.D.'s is that a member is not a good ambassador, an E.D. should be allowed to disqualify the applicant. | ||
| We suggest a range of minus 1 to minus 5 points in the discretion of the E.D. or selection panel. | ||
| 5. | Will the applicant attend all workshops and otherwise share in the work of the Exchange? | |
| We believe that the exchange workshop is one of the important differences between the friendship force and travel clubs. We must not lower our standards. Our club's experience has been that ill- trained ambassadors are problem ambassadors. | ||
| If the answer to question no.5 is "no" this applicant must be rejected unless the E.D. believes that the applicant's reason for nonattendance is compelling and the E.D. is satisfied that applicant accepts responsibility for assimilating workshop material and will be a well-trained ambassador. This also applies to applicants from ff clubs in other cities. | ||
| 6. | Does applicant understand and agree to the ambassador's contract? | |
| The selection committee and E.D. must be sure applicant understands and agrees to the contract. The E.D. should read it aloud in every workshop. | ||
| If applicant does not agree to the ambassador's contract unconditionally, rejection is the only option. | ||
Implementation | ||
| If spaces remain on an exchange after considering the criteria and point system, the E.D. may fill those spaces with members with lower point scores. Members who have traveled on several consecutive exchanges or are otherwise low in points may not have a competitive advantage but that does not disqualify them from consideration as ambassadors. The point system simply establishes priorities. If these recommendations are accepted, the club needs a system to record and retain information on which the point system is based and a mechanism by which to convey this information and to make these criteria binding on every outbound E.D. for years to come. We urge you not to reinvent the wheel but to pass on club decisions with the gavel so that each year we can move forward, learning from our own past and standing taller on the shoulders of those whose work preceded our own. Thank you for the opportunity to work on this important project. | ||
Respectfully submitted, | ||