For those of you who are not JCI members or are not familiar with my JCI Life, it might be quite difficult to follow the thoughts in this entry, but in case curiosity still gets the best of you, for those of you who want to understand what this entry is about. Bidding is the process of application for Area, National and Even Asian and World awards for JCI. In Bidding for awards, there are set categories and the chapters of JCI would draft a narration and compile collages or a “scrapbook” to be able to bag winning bids and get awards for the chapters or individual members applying for the individual awards.
When I joined JCI, my sponsor; PP Don told me about the concept of bidding. He told me that since I was a good writer, it would be a good idea to help the chapter work on their bids. The concept of a bid was very foreign to me back then, I had no idea what it took to write a winning bid and I never had the chance to scope the competition and how judging worked for the bidding process.
In any case, as expected, I was tasked to help out and work with the chapter on our bids only with a few months of experience as a member. It was quite a confusing journey at first and with the pool of talents we had in the chapter at the time, we may have stretched ourselves a little to far by creating too many bids. Honestly at the time, the chapter was probably overwhelmed both in delivery of its activities, and delivery in the bids that we may have gotten a little lost along the way. Don’t get me wrong, I think it was a good kind of lost in a sense that in the process of failure of delivery last year, the insight and learning we have gained are very important things that we can now apply not only for the purposes of bidding, but also the purposes of running our chapter better.
Last year, our bids ranked mostly around the 10-15th place. Much to my surprise, my bid for new member had placed 4th in the National Convention Awards. I know to some, it may not mean too much, but for a member of only 3 months, it was something that I haven’t expected and something that definitely motivated me to try harder for the next year.
One very memorable part of the bidding process for me was also the fact that making it to the deadlines (areacon) was twice as hard for the chapter given that on the week of the deadline, members of JCI Cainta were braving floods to help rescue some stranded citizens of Cainta during Habagat floods.
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(a few collages I used from my bid a couple of years ago)
Anyways, this year, unlike last year, I have had a different level of appreciation for the bidding process, don’t get me wrong, I’m still not perfect nor an authority in the bidding process (just like last year I also had my share in cramming for the bids I had to work on). In any case, for this year, bidding was particularly a wonderful journey for me since I had a lot of good things to write about and perhaps I now have a better appreciation of the process of bidding.
What particularly caught my attention is the accomplishments we have reached as individuals and as a chapter in the process of compiling our bids and quantifying and qualifying our accomplishments when drafting our reports. Making bids can equally be rewarding and frustrating in a sense that you will really see what went right and where you went wrong in delivery of your projects or services as members of JCI.
What the process taught me so far this year is that in drafting your bids, the delivery of service and the entire planning process of your project or program is really the bulk of the work in creating your success as awards winners here in JCI.
This process also made me realize that winning awards is half the goal of delivering an award winning performance as well. I know that we are far from perfect but the bidding process made me realize that bidding is not just meant to make you be the best chapter, but instead its meant to help you be better through the careful analysis and packaging of the performance that you and your chapter have delivered in pursuit of your projects and programs you intended to deliver.
With that, I am happy to report that the last week prior to the deadline of filing our ebids, it was surprisingly a fun and fulfilling journey, rather than a hard and pressure filled escapade for me.
At this point I don’t know how far the bids I’ve drafted will take us, but I do know that I am happy with the work I have done. (and yes, if that fails, we still have the chance to edit our bids for Natcon :P) Bid deadlines for areacon is over, and I hope everybody had as much fun as I did in making their bids too :)
The JCI Bidding Experience For those of you who are not JCI members or are not familiar with my JCI Life…
