Page 4: From the General Secretary
From SI Exco News
- No SI News for All the members?
It was an easy decision for this Exco when we agreed that we would ask all National Groups of Servas to send SI News to all members (hosts and travellers). After all, what does it mean to be a member of an international organisation like Servas if you do not have any idea what is happening in that organisation? Especially because there are so many interesting differences. Each year SI News is published we can see it again. And we were happy to see that different countries we at last convinced that sending SI News to the hosts and the travellers was a good thing. Suddenly an e-mail pops up on my screen: One of the bigger National Groups is telling the editor of SI News, Sharon Belden, that they are ‘…pleasantly surprised to find that the vast majority either are happy to read the newsletter on the web, or don't really have time to read it!’ The conclusion is that they only want copies for less than 10% of their members. What is this, after all our efforts to convince people that S News is the only source of international information members will receive per year? I was astonished - and alarmed too. I hope to hear later what kind of survey they did to find out about this ‘majority’. Having no time is only a matter of choice … and reading on the web? I looked at the web at once: about 600 hosts - and how many of these hosts take a look every now and then? ICT made a listing of the names for us: 25! That is less than 4%. Alarmed as I was I knew at least one thing that should be stressed in this SI News issue of spring 2004: Why does Exco advise sending SI News to all members?
1.It is the only possibility to tell all members what happens in the International Servas family
2.It is available in three languages, so for many persons who find it difficult to read English it is a good source
3.It is sent to the National Group without costs. The only thing they have to do is to send it out, preferably together with the national Newsletter
4.For countries with too little income to cover the costs of postage there is the opportunity to ask for funding (Exco announced this already in 2001). Pleasantly surprised? I hope you can understand why I was alarmed.
PS In between that NS told me that the words “pleasantly surprised” were not well thought out when talking about hosts that do not have time to read SI News. Pleasantly surprised yes about “so many hosts that are open to the electronic option”. Thanks again for the discussion! While writing a letter to this NS I tried to download the SI News in English including pictures and calculated that it takes 50 minutes to download!
What is wrong with a host fee? Servas has a long tradition of asking money for a Letter of Introduction. The stamp ‘must’ be paid for and the National Group gets some income from this too. But where is the logic in having a system where the travellers are pay for the whole organisation? Oh, yes ‘We hosts give them a meal and have costs for the bed…’ I would like to ask your opinion about this way of thinking. Is it true that hosts and travellers both like meeting other people and learning about other cultures? I hope so - that's my experience. For me an encounter is the same being a host or being a traveller: exciting. So why couldn’t we both pay a bit of the necessary costs? The traveller has costs for travelling and the host for the lodging. So far so good for the meeting itself. Wouldn’t it be kind of the same for the costs of the organising? The traveller pays for the opportunity to meet people by paying for the LoI and the host lists he wants to borrow. Hosts pay for the costs of making it possible for travellers to know their names so that they can be contacted. The host list is printed and sent out to ensure that the host will get travellers. So why not pay a contribution to those costs?
In Short:
What the National Group should do for their traveller is clear:
1. Provide LoIs
2. Make available the host lists of other countries What the National Group should do for their own hosts is however often underexposed:
1. Distribute a reliable host list worldwide
2. Tell the hosts about Servas International and what is happening there. Preferably a National Newsletter and once a year SI News. Many countries have a host fee. It is good logic to try to cover the costs mentioned above.
Frits Stuurman
generalsecretary@servas.org
