The VSA Annual General Meeting of 2014 took place on Thursday, the 18th of December in a Skype conference. All members of the VSA were invited. Here are the minutes and the presentation:
VSA AGM 2014, Date: 18th December 2014
Members present: Ronald Wertlen, Dr. Anna Wertlen, Terri-Lynn Penney, Richard Strickland, Lukas Scharnberg
Apologies: Amanda Sue McPhail, Jan Baekelandt, Judith Flügge, Christoph Flügge, Sabine Wiekenberg, Eva Hert
Finances
Finances are stable with slight increases. Because Julia probably won’t come to SA due her visa struggle it is vague how the fundraising will develop in 2015. The account in Belgium won’t be used anymore.
Annual awarenet Projects
The VSA would like to keep up the focus on annual projects (four annual projects: Science, Health & Fitness, Music & Peace, Madiba) which are more promising for the learning curve of the children as well as for VSA. Furthermore, annual projects can become flagships and engender a corporate identity for VSA.
Sonic Art Studio
Sonic Art Studio (SAS) will become an equal partner to VSA within the annual awarenet Peace and Music Project. The employees of SAS will focus on the music training of the learners and the VSA employees will work with them on awarenet, writing about experiences, texts and opinions about the concert.
awarenet Training
The numbers of awarenet training sessions decreased rapidly in 2014 compared to 2013. To scale them up again the VSA will focus on more schools but smaller groups. To be able to work with more schools there are a couple of computer labs, which will have to be fixed. The Rhodes University might be able to help out. We need to contact them to see if they have volunteers or other students. The Rhodes University has a personal interest in repairing the labs as well because the computers were mostly sponsored by them. As soon as the labs work again Terri will give awarenet training in the different schools while Lukas will teach the learners and teachers in the lab of the Joya Youth Hub. There will be a limit of 20 learners per session (the quality of sessions is the focus).
Series of Movies
Anna produced already 2 movies, one about how awarenet came to life, the other movie about the volunteers Antje and Rieke who worked for VSA in 20132014. A movie about the impact of the awarenet programme is planned to attract sponsors as well as to promote the VSA for volunteers and supporters. Therefore, Anna is staying in contract with Dinah Arnott, a lecturer at the Rhodes University Journalism Department. She offered that we work together with her students. Anna will follow up on that whereby Lukas will be the local contact person.
Skype Meetings
To improve the communication between VSA Germany and VSA South Africa there will be regular skype-meetings next year – probably on a weekly basis. The date will be fixed next year during the first skype-meeting which will be on the 7th January 6pm (7pm SA).
awarenet Development (eKhaya ICT)
The IPNet project for the CSIR is almost completed. The knowledge gained will help us to further develop awarenet for mobile devices.
