Sunday, July 20, 2014

The First Official Day

After a delicious international breakfast buffet, we started off the day with a choice of sessions to attend. Some were about leadership, youth learning or quota, but I attended a special session on governance that was added to the schedule to ensure the young women that participated in the leadership challenge the day before could be informed and ask questions about the changes to the constitution.

It was thrilling to see so many young women who were passionate about the governance side of WAGGGS. I'm sure that we'll be seeing many of them in various roles in the future! The discussions were focused on the changes to the constitution and bye-laws, such that WAGGGS could be incorporated as a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO) by the Charity Commission in the UK, where it is based out of. This is a new designation for organizations that is designed to better protect board members and allow the organization to hire employees, rent and buy property and sign contracts.

Many of the delegates were concerned about how this designation would change what WAGGGS does for the MOs, but it was explained that it would really just affect administrative tasks in the WAGGGS office. It would be the back-end work changing, but nothing that MOs would viably see. The Australian and New Zealand delegates spoke to how becoming a CIO would allow the organization to move forward and make it easier to recruit nominees for the World Board.

The other topics of discussion included having a clause that would allow new membership categories to be proposed and vote upon to help with membership growth, email and postal voting in-between conferences and proxy voting for MOs that couldn't attend World Conferences for some reason. The main concern with new membership categories was about who this could possibly include. It seemed like an almost unnecessary issue because the new categories themselves could be proposed in a motion at future conferences and the clause could be redundant.

With the other proposals, the main concern was that the procedures were not detailed enough. Email and postal voting had the intent of being used to make important decisions between World Conferences, since the world seems to move more quickly now with technology. It wasn't clear that this would be it's only use, though, which concerned some delegates. The proxy voting motion had the intent to allow MOs who could not attend for financial, societal, geographical, etc. issues to have a say at World Conferences, but had almost no procedure written out. While we were reassured that it would be a consultative process to develop the procedures (asking for MO input, specifying the number of proxy votes one MO could make, etc.), some delegates were not convinced about the motions.

Other changes to the constitution were made to accommodate the requirements for becoming a CIO. One important point about this is that amendments would have to be pre-approved before conferences since the Charity Commission would already have had to agree to changes. These changes included things like having a 75% majority on motions (past statistics showed that all except one motion from the recent conference would have already passed with this) and minor wording and lay-out changes.

After another buffet-style meal for lunch, we were off to the orientation session, to learn about the various procedures involved in participating in a World Conference. We learned about motion, amendment and voting processes, as well as how MOs took part in the discussion periods throughout the conference. We also learned how to use our electronic voting keypads (which also had some technical difficulties during our test).

A few voting terms that came in handy were:

Voting Strength: How many votes were possible from MOs eligible to vote for a motion.

Simple Majority: 50%+1 of the voting strength.

2/3 Majority: An alternative way to pass a motion.

We also learned about the World Board elections that were to come and the procedures that went along with that.

Finally, the day moved into the opening of the 35th World Conference. The first lesson was on using social media to share our World Conference experience. We took some selfies to share with the world (and you can find more using the #35WoCo hashtag on Twitter and Facebook or by checking out the sidebar of this blog). The theme of the World Conference was "Imagine More," with the motto of "Connect. Grow. Impact." We heard about Vision 2020 and the outcomes of the Strategic Plan for the next triennium. After a brief discussion about the outcomes, we were introduced to Princess Mabel van Oranje and her organization, Girls Not Brides. She reminded us that through organizations like WAGGGS, we really can change the world for girls and women and how "the impossible is actually possible."

Some of the delegates from Denmark.

Loved the flowers that the delegates from the Cook Islands wore!

It was an information-packed day, but I felt like I had an even better grasp on what we were there to do. I also felt so inspired to be in the presence of so many women who had the same drive that I did to make things better for girls and young women and empower them to be leaders.

1 comment:

  1. Hey Lauren, I hope you can come to Guelph and share your experience with us.

    ReplyDelete