A Good Dream - A Great Purpose

This weekend, I had an amazing dream. I was headed to a JCI recruitment event to give a presentation and on the radio, I heard the DJ mention the Junior Chamber as THE source of training young talent to become Young Leaders who make a difference. When I arrived, there was a buzz in the room and hands went up with questions, comments, even personal testimonials on the benefits that had been gained.

At the end, when the questions died down and I looked at the 40-50 people in attendance, wondering why there weren't more, I Called the group to Action by telling them that they needed to get up, sign up, and get started NOW. And they did. Every last one of them.

It made me think about the purpose of the organization to which we swear to uphold when we become a member:

"..to contribute to the advancement of the global community by providing the opportunity for young people to develop the leadership skills, social responsibility, entrepreneurship, and fellowship necessary to create positive change."

Are all of us doing this? or are we hoarding our knowledge and connections to ourselves and not passing any of it along? And does the purpose say that we can only contribute to the advancement of young people in the Junior Chamber?

I spoke to the leader of a very large Young Professional group in a nearby city today, who have done some amazing things. They put young people on civic and business boards all over their community to give a voice to the concerns of young talent. In hindsight, however, the leader was concerned that while young people were volunteering, many were unprepared to interface with affluent, influential, and well-connected older leaders of the community. So together, we proposed a collaborative effort for initial and developing training of young professionals in this already-existing organization, led by the Junior Chamber as a Leadership Training Task Force. It was a win-win scenario.

So my lesson from this dream was to truly think about what it means to contribute -- and to truly provide opportunities for young people. Maybe the key to reviving a chapter lies in how you give "service to humanity," after all.