SI MONTHLY NEWS AUGUST 2005 Editorial

From SI Exco News

Meetings, meetings, meetings ..


Around the Servas world meetings are taking place. They may be a Servas traveller meeting his or her host for the night, a local group getting together for a barbeque, a national group having its Annual General meeting or an international group sitting down to discuss the way forward for Servas. Over the last month or so all these events have been happening around the world with plenty more to come. That is one of the purposes of Servas, a peaceful getting together of people in small and large groups to get a greater understanding of each other and so help spread accord rather than discord round the world. In this issue there is a record of some successful meetings that have been held: on the International level in Askov, Denmark; on the national level in India, and on the individual levels in a variety of countries. Potential successes are anticipated with national/international level meetings in Germany and Patagonia. In this latter the future of Servas, the youth, are making big strides.

Find out more about what meetings are happening by checking our Meetings and Get togethers on page 3. Check the national newsletters which are now coming on line on www.siexco.org.

Join in, take a constructive, positive part. And remember to listen. As Servas we hope to help bring about peaceful solutions in a quiet way. We cannot help find solutions if we have not listened to the problem. And to quote from The Art of Conflict Resolution by the Danish Centre for Conflict Resolution: 'The less we blow ourselves up as being experts, the more we can contribute.'


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Hurricane Katrina - how can Servas help?


As this is written, our thoughts and wishes for positive re-construction go out to those who suffered the effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. We need to do more than provide thoughts on such occasions. What can Servas do to help in such situations? .........................

It would be good if Servas Monthly News readers could help provide answers to that question.

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Is the monthly news now accessible?


I ask this question as I know that I have not been able to access the pdf on my home computer although I can access it from work. This is because at home I have an old version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Through discussion we decided that I could not access it due to some fancy fonts that I had been using for previous issues. From this I have now changed the fonts to more basic ones. Hopefully the problem will have been solved so that more people will have access to the Monthly News and so be able to keep up with what is going on. Please let me know whether you can access or not.


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Contact

We welcome articles coming to SI Monthly News. We do not guarantee that the article, or any part of it will be published. This depends on the theme for the month along with the number of other articles also available for publication.

Please keep the article length to a maximum of 1 side of A4, preferably less. If more than this it is likely to be cut.

Preferred method of contact is email at: newsletter[et]servas.org or jgiffould[et]aol.com

Please make sure that Servas: Monthly News is part of the subject heading. Otherwise if the email address is not recognised it may well get deleted before being read.


The postal address is:

Jane Giffould,

SI Monthly News Editor

20 Weavers Row,

Halstead, Essex, CO9 2JX

England.

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