The third session of the 76th round of Congress 60 workshops in the Academy branch of Congress 60 was administered on September 28th, 2022 at 10 a.m. by Mr. Dezhakam as the master of the ceremony and Msr. Akram as the secretary. The agenda was “Agent and Border guard’s week”.
Agent and Border guard’s week
As I said, becoming a border guard is like walking on fire with a burnt foot, or walking barefoot in a cave. If you think deeply, you will get to this case. This is the philosophy of a border guard that I am telling you, it means whatever we did in Congress 60 is done based on lots of happenings. As far as I know no other NGO around the globe has a system as we have in Congress 60.
When Congress 60 started, we chose some persons to run different branches in all the branches. For example, there was a branch in a city and we chose someone as in charge of that branch. In the beginning, it was working very well, it was good for six months, it was good for a year, and that person was dominant, good, and trustworthy. It was good for six months, it was good for a year, but after a year, the situation changed.
After that some people became relatives and others became outsiders, etc, he could get some people to serve others, and the others wouldn’t get any chance to serve, he could get some fired and kick some others out of Congress 60. Then we realized that the situation is changing, and that person is going out of control and branch members became sad, and the performance of the branch start to go down. Because they run the branch to their own taste.
Then we started to think about how to face this in the branches, we have more than 100 branches in Congress 60, what system could get this situation solved in a proper manner? To stop that things to happen? Stop some people to become relative with the person in charge, and other issues, although all members of Congress 60 are getting the knowledge and courses, but when they go to a position, there might be some problem, constantly.
Therefore, I planned for the border guard (Marzban) persons, the best thing we could do is to let each branch to have their own elections, members of the same branch volunteer, for example 5 person from gentlemen and 2 person from ladies, and some person from co-travelers, and so on, for a 14 months period. These persons could be a volunteer candidate and start serving as a border guard to run the branch. Every day one of them should be standby border guard who oversees all the other guards. This was planned. Based on your own and all of us comments, we got the best results from this plan. Both for travelers and co-travelers.
We said a border guard could be elected two rounds in a row. If they elected one time, they could volunteer in next round and get elected for second round. Then we saw this is making a problem again. This was the reason: person that was elected for the second time got problem with the new ones. Whatever the new ones would say, they said no, last year we were doing in this way, the way that we were doing in the last round was better. Whatever new ones said, they said we were doing somehow else. Then we changed it to the way that a border guard could be elected only one round.
And with the system of 14 months in each election period, it’s only 14 months, we saw that branches are running the best possible way. Good thing was they didn’t get tired in 14-month period, it wasn’t like that someone become border guard for 5 years for example and need to set his life aside to be the border guard. For example, we have five border guards here. Each day one of them is standby, others are present too, but there’s only one standby border guard. Taking turns each day one of them is standby and runs the branch.
Then we realized that border guards are usually liberated for one year or so, and we have members in Congress 60 with 10 years of liberation, 15 years of liberation, 20 years of liberation. Border guards with shorter liberation times are hard to tell others with 10 years or 15 years of liberation to do something or ask them something. They may not be prepared for some situations, or maybe they don’t know all the rules of Congress 60 themselves, they are not that much experienced, therefore we decided to have a Guide for them.
One of the senior members, who has the experience and has been working so hard for Congress 60, knows every corner of Congress 60, could tell the opinion about different persons, other senior members would listen to him, can be elected as agent, and be border guards’ Guide too. Agent has no executive responsibility, it’s only border guards that are executive persons. Both for gentlemen and ladies. With this system we can see that how smooth and with no problem, all the branches are running and doing their job.
It is also an education course. Every person working as a border guard it’s a complete education for them, because it has its own hardship and problems. They should have a good diplomacy, should get along with people, some are in their first travel, some are newcomers, some are under withdrawal symptoms and angry, may shout to other and thousand problems may happen. Border guard should be patient enough to have a good reflect and behavior in all of these situations and help people. The length of border guard period is 14 months. They will learn management, crisis management, because if they don’t treat people well, they need to leave Congress 60 after their border guard service period.
If they treat people badly, after their border guard period is done, they should leave Congress 60, because no one will socialize with them anymore. Therefore, they will learn how to treat others. How to treat a guide, how to treat travelers. They will learn the pure acts. Then we realized we should develop this system of agents and border guards. We put the border guard on the website as well. Both Persian and English websites. They have an agent and some border guards as well. With the same rules also. When we develop the rules of Congress 60 for all different fields, we will not get any problems.
When we follow any other rules, we will have problems. For example, we can see that Congress 60 website is following the same rule and has an agent and some border guards. The same rule we have for Instagram. Instagram has the agent and border guards too. Although agents and other persons serving on Instagram are working so hard, but they are out of sight.
You might not see them, might not know them, might never have seen them, but they are working hard. Sometimes we see that they are working until so late, they are planning, they are programming, and checking the website.
Translated by Traveler Arash
Revised by Elahe
Oct 2022