MidSession Retreat

For the midsummer retreat, we flew down to LA.  All the norcal interns met at SFO at 5:50 AM, and flew Southwest Airlines to LAX.  We then drove to the JACCC building in Little Tokyo, where we had a variety of workshops. 

The first was a time management workshop, where we were told how to manage our time using a planner, and how to use specific parts of a planner. Our next workshop was a Little Tokyo Video scavenger hunt, where we ran around Little Tokyo for an hour with a video camera, capturing various parts of Little Tokyo on film.  The next workshop was a personality test, in which we each determined our personality and then act out a scenario in which we pretend to be the opposite personality type.  Our final workshop was a team building workshop, where we had to silently copy a lego structure with our team without talking. 

For dinner, we had an alumni potluck, in which over 15 alumni from as far as 6 years back came and ate dinner with us.  It was interesting to see how so many of them had become so involved in various organizations, and many times their experience started with the NCI program.

We then drove over to the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, and got to meet high school students in a community program from JACLPSW. We did various icebreakers, then got together in groups and talked about our different programs that we are in, and how we plan to support the community through our efforts.

The next day, we went to the JACL National Conference, which brought together about 400 members of JACL from across the country.  NCI acted as notetakers and runners for each workshop, and we also participated in different workshops throughout the day.  The event schedule included opening plenary, two workshops, lunch, and closing plenary.  Various members of the JA community spoke and encouraged dialogue between the various JACL chapters concerning the problems in the JA community.  The two workshops I attended were Civic Engagement and Leadership Development, and Community Investments.  The Leadership Development workshop was led by Craig Ishii and Jon Osaki, where we split into groups and came up with ideas on how to get youth involvement in leadership positions of JACL and other JA organizations, and how many chapters of JACL have to change their mindset to allow these younger adults to take active leadership roles.  The Community Investments workshop was led by Tim Otani, and was a presentation on how raise funds for a nonprofit organization. 

Overall, this retreat was a great experience for me, not only because of the participation in the conference, but also because I was able to meet so many different community leaders, each with their own perspective on the future of the JA community.  It was rather inspiring to see how important this community is to so many people, and the role that I would be playing as an intern and as a member of the future JA community became more apparent through this weekend.  Overall, this retreat has become one of the most memorable parts of this internship, not to mention how fun it was to spend time with the 14 other interns in the program!