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Council Meeting: GEN Europe
19. Nov. 1998, Terre d´Eneille, Belgium
Present were just the members of the Council:
Christina de Wilde, Terre d Enneille, President
Agnieszka Komoch, GEN-Europe, Lebensgarten, Treasurer
Declan Kennedy, GEN-Europe, Lebensgarten, Secretary
Lucilla Borio, Torri Superiore
Silke Hagmaier, Sieben Linden
Demet Irlki, Hocamköy
1. Decision : To relook at the structure for GEN-Europe and see what we need now and in the future and then to see how this fits in with other structures like ENA - and GEN as a whole.
2. Decision: There should be three circles of involvement in GEN-Europe:
- Inner circle is existing eco-villages and network of eco-villages with full vote,
- Second circle are initiatives, honorary members and related networks,
- Interested individuals, other networks and organisation make up the third circle.
3. Decision: All applications from European and African eco-villages (EVs), networks and members for Monies, grants and support to Gaia Trust or GEN-International must go through GEN-Europe council or, at least, its secretariat.
4. Decision: May East's request to be coopted onto a UN Working Group is not a decision of the Council and should be addressed to Philip Synder, GAIA Villages, Copenhagen. The suggestion that she should be part of the Council itself was considered not necessary, at this time. At this point, we would like to thank her for her engagement in re-connecting the Findhorn Foundation to GEN-Europe activities and in assisting with the connection to UN agencies.
5. Decision: Current applications for membership
On application, Damanhur, Italy, was accepted as a full member. The Council feels that it is necessary for Damanhur to be actively taking part in RIVE.
Stamm Fuessen, Germany, will be accepted as soon as they submit the CSRA (Self-Audit).
The French Network is recognised as an Associate member. As soon as some of the existing villages in France join them or become a sub-network of their association, they can re-apply for full membership.
It was decided to review all existing members to see if they meet the criteria to be full or associate members, at such time when they are renewing their annual membership fees.
6. Decision: We have one and a half years until the next general assembly to make detailed proposal of amendments to the Articles of the Association. The Statute should be changed as little as possible. Bye- laws are more flexible and can be suited to the time. A working group on the bye-laws was set up to prepare all changes, especially on the definition of what an eco-village is, in advance of this meeting made up of all interested members of the Council. Input will be solicited from the members.
Decision 7: Possible distribution of activities was proposed so that more decentralisation could take place, this distribution will be the basis for the new budget July 1999 - June 2000:
Activities of GEN-Europe that can be farmed out:
Administration of GEN meetings (minutes, etc.)
Attending Conferences to gather information for GEN-Europe
Directory
Education co-ordination & training
Exhibition + slide show
Fund-raising
Projects
Reports
Newsletter - magazine
Sales of Materials
Council co-ordinates or does:
Annual Budgeting
Attending Conferences as Rep. of GEN-Europe & reports
Attending Networking meetings & reports
Caring for EV and networks
Co-ordination between Council, Board & Gaia Villages
Public Relations
Activities that remain in the Service Node (Secretariat):
Answering enquiries, e-mail, tel. fax & letters
Archives and Filing
Bookkeeping
Budgeting
Caring for EV and networks
Co-ordination between Council, Board & Gaia Villages
Database
Editing of networking materials
Funds management
Membership - subscription
Newsletter co-ordination
Projects including co-ordination
Public Relations, especially Representation
Reports on activities
Sales of materials
Staff salaries, taxes, training, etc.
Taking care of Visitors
Team co-ordination + self-controlling
Web pages for server node
Decision 8: Caring for EV and networks
Council members will be ready to take over the responsibility for different countries, caring, informing, possibly attending national networks meetings, etc.:
Agnieszka: Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Spain
Christina: Francophonian countries, U.K.
Declan: Croatia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Slovenia
Demet (Mete): Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Macedonia, Turkey, Turkic Republics, Yugoslavia
Lucilla: Italy, Malta, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Yugoslavia
Silke: Austria, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, UK
Decision 9: European Newsletter/Magazine
If the budget allows, the newsletter will be expanded to being a magazine with European-wide advertisement, as suggested by Leila Dregger, Silke Hagmaier and Wolfram Nolte in the letter from Leila. The 0-issue will be supported out of the 198/99 budget, Issues 1 and 2 will be supported by a grant. Thereafter, the magazine will have to support itself. This project is expected to be a source of income after a year or so
Decision 10: It would have an advisory board for the magazine which would be the same as the GEN-Council and meetings would be done concurrently to save money, e.g. the last day of the Board meeting, the Magazine team could come in. At the moment the newsletter is costing roughly DM 9500,- per issue including printing, salaries, postage and address administration. The magazine would be self supporting after the second issue, The support should start next Spring with a combination of Newsletter and Magazine = transition, Responsible would be Leila, Wolfram, and as native English speaker Hamish, as he would connect up to what has been happening and to income generating activities for GEN as a whole. Hamish has to be asked, as soon as possible. The co-ordination for the Council will be taken over by Declan.
Decision 11: The production of the next Directory can be decentralised. It could be done together with Diggers & Dreamers and Eurotopia, in the future. It is still necessary to have it in book form, even in two years time. The Directory can get a credit of about Euro 15 000,- which will have to be paid back after the sales. This money will be coming hopefully from the present sales of the current Directory.
Decision 12: Exhibition and Slide Show: After Mexico, the exhibition will be handed over to Torri Superiore to administrate, to accept applications for places that need it, to expand and up-date materials and to concurrently up-date the GEN-Europe slide show and administer it too. Lucilla will find someone to help her in doing this job from Mid-May.
Decision 13: Education and E/V training
May East from Findhorn and Eva Stuetzel from Sieben Linden will be asked to co-ordinate this area. They will have to fundraise the estimated 12 000,- Euro to pay themselves for this work. Other resource people are Mete in Turkey, Christina in Belgium, Declan at Lebensgarten, Liisa in Finland, Jan Martin in Israel, etc., etc. The national networks should inform the Council, especially Declan, about a relevant spokesperson in your country and networks. Declan will then compile a list which should be published in the Spring 99 newsletter.
Decision 14: Conferences and Gathering Information, with Reports will be worked through the Forum, should be published as a calendar in the Magazine and - as far as interesting to all - the reports can be published in the magazine. Attendance at such events should be self-financing and self-sufficient as far as possible, those attending should be the nearest member of the GEN network to the conference place, to save travel costs and CO2.
Decision 15: Fund-raising:
On European level we are suggesting that the following people would be in a fund-raising sub-network: for example: Emmi Bakker (NL), Eva in Sieben Linden, Sue Robinson (Scotland), Christina (B), Keith + Marcus (IRL), Mete (Turkey), possibly Nadia in Brussels, Co-ordination and information flow: Declan until July, otherwise all members of GEN-Europe Council will keep an eye out for who could take this over (e.g. Eva). There is an extra 6 000,- Euros coming from GAIA Villages, each year, to get these proposals going and to co-ordinate this effort.
Income Generation
Income generation was seen as something separate. We will contact Hamish because he seems to be interested in getting a consultancy going for income generation for EVs. We support this idea wholeheartedly.
Decision 16: Africa:
Christina is interested in caring for Africa and nurturing on the initiatives there. She will need a small budget for this work and some travel money would be ideal but cannot fit into the budget at the moment. This would be another task for the fund-raising group.
Decision 17: The next meeting of the GEN-Europe Council will be in Mid-February 1999, organised by Sieben Linden, Germany or by Hocamkoy, Turkey. Declan will co-ordinate place and date, preferably before
Decision 18: Further funds can be realised from sales of materials by the server node or if some EV is ready to take on a mail order service, as an income generating activity.
Decision 19: An exchange system something like LETS was suggested between European EV to find new outlets for commodities produced in the respective EVs. This exchange system would cut out the expensive transfer of monies, by just having an accounting system. Declan will circulate ideas on this to members before Christmas 1998.
Decision 20: The proposed budget to be submitted to Gaia Villages by Feb. 1999 for funding was worked upon and adopted.
Lucilla proposed a vote of appreciation to Agnieszka for all she has done for GEN in the last year and a half, this was seconded by Declan and agreed by all. A vote of thanks to all at Terre díEneille for their hospitality was also unanimously expressed.