strategic plan

This is a big one... Lubabah wrote:
“And that we also add youth to the committee.. a lot of youth from different backgrounds and levels of involvement… even if we just form a separate committee of additional youth that don’t have the time or level of commitment to just bounce ideas from.. have them all on a yahoo group and once a week or a month, before taking on any event, just email it to them and be like what are ur thoughts.. this is in addition to the youth on the actual BOD.”

* creating a separate committee of youth to bounce ideas off of is good. But it assumes that we were NOT bouncing ideas off youth. We were. Many members of the board said they were. I can only tell you what I did. I talked to the 13-15 year olds I teach at Islamic school. I periodically talked to the leaders of the local MYNA group in Miami. I surveyed youth at regional events. I have a brother in high school. So does Assim.

By the way, Ayesha is a social worker and older sister, she knows what problems exist among youth. Asad BaYunus, Ilyas BaYunus’s son, lives here in Miami and works as a prosecutor for juvenile crimes, I discussed our ideas with him quite often. It is wrong to think that just because a youth did not sit on the board, that we were out of touch with the problems faced by youth.

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think that youth input is critical when deciding HOW to implement an idea. Here’s an example:

Idea- youth benefit from doing community service
(I don’t need a youth to tell me whether or not this is an important part of youth work. Maybe even leading the youth to think they figured it out themselves is a good strategy. But either way, advisors come together beforehand to say that it’s an idea that is good for youth development and should be part of the mission of MYNA.)

Implementation- do youth prefer to do this through a youth group, through school, individually, through a MYNA national program, or in conjunction with other community institutions or organizations; several options exist. And, where on the list of priorities they would place this item, maybe another issue should be dealt with first. But we guide them to know what the priorities are. (It’s good to empower youth to think for themselves about these options and decide HOW to implement this idea of service or any other priority.)

Let me explain how we were planning to get them involved.

Like I said before, I was appointed by the board to coordinate the creation of MYNAs strategic plan. Before I started, I researched the strat plans of the national 4-h council, National Boys and Girls club, etc.

A good strat plan has 3 aspects.
1-State org’s vision and mission and goals
2-List highest priorities
3-Define strategies on how to accomplish them

The vision and mission are the bigger picture. They come from ISLAM, they come from being an American, from knowing where we came from and where we need to go. If any advisor needs to assist a youth anywhere in MYNA, this advisor must work within a framework. This vision is as much for advisors as for the youth. I was these youth. I know that I understand things better now than I did when I was in high school (more about Islam, more about America, more about myself). Difficult discussions take place to craft a good vision and mission. We discussed sectarian issues, we discussed the failures of islamic movements, we argued about 9/11 and the importance of citizenship, we argued about the importance of college and education. A good argument can be made that to bring in a youth who is not ready into these discussions the will hurt that youth. For example, a stubborn libertarian quasi-sufi like me and a conservative proto-ikhwani like Riyad arguing about the importance of “dawah.” It was quite difficult to come to some sort of consensus.

Here’s another way of looking at this issue...
I explained it to Hana at the ISNA convention. There are two types of responses to a problem - Reactive and Proactive.

The general problem at hand can be summed up in the following phrase: “It is challenging to grow up Muslim in America.” We don’t need a youth to tell us this, like I keep saying, we were these youth not long ago.

1-Reactive response: survey the youth about the hardships they face and go about trying to ease those particular hardships.

Now if our work was going to be about addressing particular hardships with any real long term success, We would have to bring professionals into the picture. It can’t be “by youth, for youth.”

For example, youth and parent communication problems need trained counselors. Youth with drug or alcohol issues need professional help. Youth doing bad in school need good tutoring. Youth wanting to go to college need test prep. Youth with no positive role models need good older mentors.

Youth with issues of “not being taken seriously” are the only ones that don’t need professionals. They need to be empowered to organize activities for themselves. And as a grassroots activist, I say empowering youth to organize good deeds at the local level, as a group, can be a most rewarding experience.

2-Proactive response: figure out what it means to be a muslim in america. Then design activities to build and reinforce particular characteristics.

Let me state it another way, Lubabah's father is a scholar, i don't think, she-the daughter, could have told him what sort of Islam she should be taught. Also, i don't think, she-a student of arabic, should tell her teacher the best form of arabic to teach. I’m not talking about HOW, I’m talking about WHAT.

When it comes to designing activities, of course again Youth should be empowered, I am who I am because I was empowered as a youth to organize activities. But like I said earlier, It would be the advisor who should guide the youth to do the high priority things (like community service). And that is what we were at the stage of doing; coming up with those bigger picture things that MYNA advisors would guide youth towards.

If we had been allowed to proceed, the plan was to:
1-create some initial priorities
2-create several “discovery” groups with youth on them to investigate these priorities, and give us recommendations.
3-review those recommendations with the youth at the winter leadership program and turn them into implementation guidelines for local youth.
4-Turn all of this into an official strategic plan. every few years, do this again so that the organization keeps up with changes in society.

I was very close to taking us to level 2 in November, when things began to unravel. I was preparing resource packets for various discovery groups. Then we were forced by ISNA’s EC to revive the old failed MYNA structure, bring youth into leadership positions immediately, and cease “doing” anything. Only then would we be allowed to proceed. How absurd? We did not get involved in this effort to play games and politics. ISNAs foolish actions caused resignations in protest. extremely disappointing. Just think about where we would have been by now.

In conclusion...
Our elders desire a generation with good leaders after them. You become a good leader from the experiences of doing good deeds and leading others in the doing of good deeds. The most rewarding good deeds are those that can be carried out locally, where you can see the results immediately. It builds confidence, and optimism.

Sticking to the example of promoting community service:
Youth can Think about and Decide what service activity to do. Youth can Lead an effort to clean up a neighborhood, a mosque, etc. Lead an effort to give assistance to local poor people. etc. etc. let the youth decide which community service they want to perform. We Give them advise and support. Let them gain real experience, build real character.

We wanted youth to stay where they can grow most. The national organization should be there to support them, step in with professional assistance when they need it; with Money when their local masjid or high school will not sponsor the activity THEY WANT to do. Wouldn’t that be great. If only ISNA, or any other national Muslim organization did this. There was no one, so the board decided as a group to make MYNA that type of organization.

While talking about this to Hana at the convention, she seemed to not want this, she wanted MYNA to simply be an organization where youth respond to problems that they themselves determine are problems. That We should let youth tell us what we need to be about. I think this approach is extremely short-sighted. When I asked her what was the problem with what I was saying, she could not tell me anything other than “youth are not involved”. Her arguments were not convincing, and she offered no details.

Our board had made these decisions after long discussions, compromise, and consensus. And I’ve just told you how diverse the board was. It’s not right that she still got to undermine our effort by going to Shk. Nur and Shk. Idrees. I could be wrong, but I think this is why we did not get support from them. They had doubts about us. Where did they get these doubts? I don’t get it.

As far as placing youth on the board goes. its easier to say that a youth should have been on our board, than it is to suggest a name. And ask that youth’s parents if they want their child to take part, after we explain that we have mandatory teleconferences every Monday night that last till 11pm. And aside from these teleconferences there are also tasks that are assigned. Of the many youth that I know, I don’t think any one of them had the background needed to be able to join and keep up as board members. Of course, I could be wrong.

End of part 5