SI MONTHLY NEWS May 2007 News - Hospitality organisations, distant voting
From SI Exco News
Hospitality Organizations
Dear friends of Servas ,
If you have time maybe you could spend a couple of minutes on the issue ‘Hospitality Organizations’ as more and more their growth and their approach will become very important and will influence Servas.
I participated at this event organised by Be Welcome and I want to send you a short feedback.
There were about 100 participants. The majority of the people were members of Hospitality Club (HC), Couchsurfing (CS) and BeWelcome (BW), most of them are members of 2 ,3, 4 organisations. There were very few Servas members, max 10, the NS of Servas Netherlands came over to participate.
Most of the participants were young people from countries all over the world, some living in Belgium, others coming over from European countries; others were travelling in Belgium or in neighbouring countries and joined the meeting. Typical that only the Servas members were ‘older’ ones
Servas is not known by the majority of the people. Reaction of people who heard about Servas before or had been member:
- too complicated (interview, LOI, host lists etc),
- too slow
- too expensive (no charge in the other organizations)
- organization for older ones, very few young members in the host lists
- in some countries very difficult to be hosted or to meet (very few hosts or no response)
There were some members of HC who didn’t feel so happy with it and are really interested to join Servas in our country or in their own country, but the majority do not complain.
I’ve participated in many Servas meetings in Europe: I can hardly say that the ‘atmosphere’ of friendship was very different to one in a Servas gathering: people are friendly, open minded and happy to meet again (hosted each other or met on a previous meeting.) Of course people joining the meeting are maybe more involved than other members, but isn’t it just the same for Servas?
In my opinion it’s a must and very important for Servas to be present in such kind of meetings, we can no longer hide ourselves and ignore the other ones.
Best Servas regards, Rita Dessauvage, NS Servas Belgium
Organisations that were present
- BeWelcome www.bewelcome.org
- CouchSurfing www.couchsurfing.org
- GlobalFreeLoaders www.globalfreeloaders.com
- Hospitalityclub www.hospitalityclub.org
- Servas www.servas.org
- Virtual Tourist www.virtualtourist.com
You can see the participants on the site www.4komma6692.de/event/brussel/
Distant Voting Schedule
I am pleased to announce that during the just concluded EXCO Meet held in Bangalore, India, EXCO has finalised the schedule for Distant Votes to be held till the next General Assembly. The schedule is as follows:
1st Distant Vote from 1st August, 2007 to 7th November, 2007
2nd Distant Vote from 15th March, 2008 to 25th June, 2008
3rd Distant Vote from 1st November, 2008 to 10th February, 2009
The first Distant Vote will be on:
1. The External Auditor’s Report on the year 2004 accounts
2. The budget for the year 2008
Voting will be held through Internet (World Wide Web). So, the Authorised Voters of all eligible member countries will be able to vote from anywhere in the world, using a computer with Internet connectivity. Voting will be kept open for several weeks. So, an Authorised Voter will be able to vote on any day convenient to him/her during this period. Of course, there will be adequate security measures to ensure that no member country can vote more than once. In the coming weeks, I shall provide you with more information about the Distant Voting process.
I feel honoured that EXCO has entrusted me with the responsibility of developing and implementing the first ever Distant Voting system for Servas International. I shall look forward to your co-operation in making this mission successful.
Pramod Kumar, General Secretary, Servas International
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