CISV San Francisco Bay Area

CISV, Inc. is a global organization dedicated to educating and inspiring for peace through encouraging inter-cultural friendship, cooperation, and understanding. We aim to help our participants develop the skills they need to become informed, responsible, and active global citizens who make a difference in their communities and the world. The glue that underpins all of our programs is friendship, in line with our founding belief that peace is possible through friendship and mutual understanding.

As the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, our aim is to provide as many young people in the greater bay area the chance to participate in CISV international and local programs. We also aim to host international camps in the bay area approximately every 3 years to provide youth and adults from all over the world the opportunity to develop global friendships and learn about other cultures right here in our own backyard. By providing increased opportunities for youth to participate in our programs, we hope their lives will be impacted by CISV and the attitude, skills, and knowledge they gained during their CISV experience. And we hope that their actions cause a "ripple effect" where people they meet throughout their lives may be impacted as well.

Other goals for the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter included expanding our fundraising base by identifying appropriate foundations or other grantors that have peace education of youth as part of their purpose and goals. We dream of being well known for creating experiences that reach at least twice as many people as we do today.

Since 1971, CISV San Francisco Bay Area has been offering a range of local activities, international camps, family hosted exchanges, and community-based projects. These are considered our programs and every year our volunteers organize them for young people and adults from over 70 countries. Over the years these programs have provided opportunities for thousands of participants to meet and develop friendships with people from different countries, backgrounds, and cultures.

CISV accomplishes its goals through age-appropriate, research-based games, activities and evaluations within the setting of multi-week camps attended by participants from all around the world. All activities have as their underlying theme our five core values: friendship, inclusiveness, enthusiasm, engagement, and cooperation. Our strong volunteer and participant base enables CISV to provide the programs and opportunities to our participants and to achieve our future goals.

CISV's assets include the amazing volunteer base from its 70 member nations who work annually to make the objective of peace through friendship come alive for thousands of children and youth. Each year, these volunteers plan, staff, fund and execute some 200 multi-week camps throughout the world, bringing to these efforts their individual expertise from a broad range of fields and backgrounds. CISV is nearly all volunteer based with only a few employees located in a handful of countries.

CISV San Francisco Bay Area is run 100% by volunteers and has a strong ongoing membership base, Junior Branch base, volunteer base and participant base which makes for an organization with the capability of activating and achieving this growth goal.

CISV is an educational organization that is working to transform attitudes and actions. By raising awareness of injustice, prejudice, and ecological abuse that exist within our own culture and then providing opportunities to turn that awareness into action, CISV works with its youth to become instruments of change. Over the years, beginning with that first Village, CISV volunteers in our Chapters have organized over 7,000 international educational programs for some 300,000 participants. Since1950 the world has changed, and CISV has evolved along with it. Today, CISV offers experiences to people of all ages, starting with children aged eleven, through to young adults. In the spirit of Doris Allen’s original vision, CISV aspires to be a unique and pioneering organization. CISV has grown from one program model to several different educational programs; from one Village to over 300 programmes a year, involving over 9000 participants.

The San Francisco Bay Area chapter of CISV has provided opportunities to hundreds of bay area young people to attend international camps all over the world. In addition, we have hosted thousands of children at the many camps we have hosted in the bay area since our chapter was founded in 1971. The most recent camp hosted in the San Francisco Bay Area was a "Step Up Camp" hosted in 2017 and In 2020, we will be hosting a "Delegation Youth Meeting" in the bay area. Through gifts received in 2016, we have been able to start a small scholarship investment fund and will be working to increase the value of this fund over the next few years.