Hello everyone! I’m Alejandro Raggio, one of the four IJP Program Leads and I have some news to share about the status of the International Judge Program.
We haven’t had much news lately and I believe everyone involved in the IJP in some way (volunteers devoting their time, members, judge candidates, etc) should be aware of what’s going on in recent months. One of the key issues that we have not improved is transparency and communication. This was one of the topics I considered important and that I included in my application as PL.
I’d like to go into many details but perhaps some people won’t want to read the full comprehensive version, so I’ll avoid making this 5.000+ words long, but I’ll share the full picture of what’s going on.
The extremely short version for those who don’t want to read any further: the IJP is adrift. Leadership is absent and volunteers are losing interest. Also, many members have lost interest in what the IJP has to offer to them.
Not only should all IJP members be aware of this, but volunteers in particular. I believe anyone devoting their time to IJP tasks is doing it to help others and I feel awful to have them keep going if their efforts are probably going towards an organization that is failing.
Timeline of events
IJP Program Lead elections happened late January this year, so we are into 5 months of the year 2 PLs term.
Since we started our term in February, we discussed a few topics about financial support, sponsors, ways of finding funding to support the IJP, connecting with other Judge organizations and we discussed the certifications offered by the IJP and the levels system, actually that was the only real discussion we had.
Also, we use a Discord forum with threads for specific topics. We were supposed to let other PLs know in advance if we were not going to be available for a trip, time off, busy at work or whatever, and that did happen in the first two months, then in April I was too busy with life and lost track of what was going on (I didn’t actively check or start new topics, but I was planning to reply to any ongoing threads).
When I realized this, for a second I believed I somehow missed all notifications and got worried, then I saw there had actually been no notifications because there hadn’t been any activity since I had last checked at the beginning of April.
On May 9, I brought this issue up to all PLs and (since we are volunteers like everyone else), I didn’t pressure them too much, since they could temporarily be busy with life. PLs use a Discord server as the main way of communication so I tagged all PLs and got no response.
I replied to several (8-10) different threads on May 9 to try to get things going again, I believe by July 1st there’s a response in only one of those threads. That means, the PL group has been totally inactive since the end of March.
I tagged them again on May 21 because there had been no replies from any of the other PLs. The only one who replied in that thread was Marco, our substitute PL who informed us he was busy preparing for some exams. No other PL replied to that thread by July 1.
I contacted some of those PLs via DM to check that they were getting the notifications. They did receive notifications but they didn’t have the time, were unable or didn’t want to reply earlier.
On June 4 I posted on another thread tagging everyone and stating I believed I was the only one left and that I was setting a deadline: if by June 30 the issue was not fixed, I was going public with this. So here I am. Nothing was fixed, nothing has been done in the PL group since the end of March.
On June 5-6, there was one reply from each PL to that message, but things did not change. Also, no one told me “please don’t make this public”. Each one replied once and went back to the previous state of complete silence.
A week later, June 12, I posted a reminder about the June 30 deadline: no replies whatsoever.
I’d like to point out that there should be at least a Program Lead meeting every three months, that never happened. So that’s yet more evidence of the lack of activity.
Summary
I won’t go into the specifics of who did what, because I don’t want to make this personal. Each one must have had their reasons for not being available anymore and it’s not my place nor my intention to criticize anyone who volunteered for a role in the organization and later realized they were not able to perform that role as they expected when they applied for it.
I did mention Marco, our substitute PL, because he did reply and he was never required to participate in the daily discussions. We invited him to our communication channels so that he could be aware of the current topics in case he was needed to substitute a PL.
Since May 9 to July 1, there were very few short messages outside the most relevant threads, so it’s not like PLs lost access to the communication channels, for some reason they do have access but they don’t use them.
What I’m seeing now is that out of 4 PLs, 3 are not active anymore. No one quit. I stopped doing anything (besides reminding them about the situation) once I saw there were almost 10 pending threads with no replies from anyone. I can’t run the organization on my own and certainly won’t be able in its current status.
Volunteers & Projects
This is a wake up call for everyone involved in the International Judge Program, especially those volunteers still actively devoting their time to the organization. I don’t think the IJP can continue with the current state of affairs. I suggest you reevaluate your contributions and decide whether you would like to continue without a clear future for the organization.
Some of the projects have already stalled, some are missing a leader, some just depend on the leader to do everything.
I can share some information about the project I was leading, that was never announced because I asked for it not to be announced until it was running. I was offered to lead the IJP’s Judge Conduct Committee last year and we began preparing the documents to start with cases this year. It took longer than we expected, but bureaucracy stopped us from being able to start. I have been expecting a reply about a bureaucratic limit that we needed to fix in order to start for several months now. I insisted, I received no reply. So I don’t think this is going to happen. I could consider our work a waste of time, but I’ll see it as a learning opportunity and I’d like to thank the judges that contributed the most to that project: Jeremie Granat, Bruna Chiochetta and Janit.
Looking back and looking ahead
Year 1 had 6 Program Leads, 5 of them didn’t apply to renew for Year 2. Some of them were too busy with life, some might have been disappointed by the IJP not being able to receive official recognition nor support.
The tasks ahead for Year 2 might have been too demanding for 4 Program Leads (instead of 6) and if suddenly 75% of those Program Leads just vanish, there’s no way that can work.
I’ve also learned that there’s no activity among Regional Representatives either. And the IJP totally forgot about the International Associated Regions who were excluded from the elections and have no representation at all.
For the future, I’m pessimistic, I don’t think there’s a way to fix this. The only way would be for people who are not willing or just can’t keep going to step aside and let newer people with more energy and time available try to make it work.
I’ve heard from some people with a lot of energy, but I don’t think that’s going to be enough to get things going again and also fix the many issues that need fixing to make the organization useful for everyone. Most of those issues are the ones I mentioned in my PL application, none have been fixed.
Maybe some smaller organizations are still running great and I’ve heard some local organizations are working without issues. It looks like running a major international organization without any support has proved to be too difficult to achieve.
I’d like to invite anyone who has anything to say about this to either participate in this thread in the IJP General forum on JudgeApps or to contact me in private through Judge Apps, or any social media.
Thanks everyone, and I hope we can close this chapter and find a better way to help each other in either this or another type of organization or community.
