Leader’s visit coup for Junior Chamber

JCI World President Bertolt Daems will hold talks with JCI members in Sheffield during a three-day tour of Britain.

Mr Daems, who is the chief executive of a management consultancy in the Netherlands, will hear about the projects that are being carried out by JCI when he visits Sheffield on February 10.

JCI’s Yorkshire and Lincolnshire network has almost 170 members, and Kate Senter, the president of Sheffield JCI, is helping to relaunch the operation in Birmingham, where JCI has struggled in recent years.

Yorkshire’s growing importance as a base for the JCI network is reflected in the fact that the county has staged the JCI UK National Convention twice in the last three years – Sheffield in 2011 and Leeds in 2009.

JCI – a volunteer network for people in their twenties and thirties – was founded in 1915 in St Louis, Missouri. It spread to the UK in 1925. JCI gives young professionals the chance to take part in community projects.

Ms Senter said yesterday: “It is quite a coup to get the world president to Sheffield and we believe this is partly down to the impact JCI Sheffield has made globally with projects including the (recently launched) mobile app, making JCI Sheffield the ones to watch in 2012.

“JCI Sheffield will be representing the UK in a number of categories at the JCI European awards which will be held in Germany in June 2012.”

Overseeing the visit in Sheffield will be the new JCI Sheffield president, Sandra Pilarczyk.