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Hi there,

Every year the BeVolunteer, the official and registered organization behind BeWelcome, should have a General Assembly (GA). There are some obligatory issues like the election of the Board of Directors, the financial report and a general report about the previous year, but other than that we are free to discuss whatever looks important. While only BeVolunteer members can actually vote, the whole GA is open for anybody interested.

The next General Assembly should take place some time between May and July and it should possibly be a real-life meeting with the possibility to participate online, too. We are currently looking for a good location and are asking YOU for help and suggestions. The location should 

 

• be suitable for 10-30 people
• have internet connection (possibly for many computers)
• have electricity
• be suitable for a hospex party for many more people

 

The party can of course take place in a different location or just a pub. Last year we had the luxury of sleeping at the location of the GA http://www.linuxhotel.de/ueber.html - for free,  thanks to a very generous donation, but it is also possible to look for hosts individually. 

In the past GAs took place in Belgium and Germany, so it might be nice to have some place different - maybe a bit warmer ;-) this year.

 We are looking forward to many good ideas, suggestions and maybe invitations!

Cheers,

Claudia (for the BoD of BeVolunteer)

Hello, if it is in barcelona, I'll try to go. There is a place in Molina my town, but I am not sure if they have internet. However the place is beautiful. I will say something when I check it.

Hi

 

With the 'weak' pound England or Great Britain could be good places to visit. Say at this festival ( I can ask the organiser) http://www.onelovefestival.co.uk/

 

But someone on BeWelcome informed me about the scary new UK Gov's way of monitering tourists so that could be a problem!

 

Maybe The meeting could take place at another event/festival to 'kill two birds with one stone' and make it into a promotional event to spread the word:)

 

 

bonjour  ci bien de donne un peux d'aide   j'aimerai bien  aide  je peux faire une proposition   pour koi pas venire chey nous est faire  l'assemblée generale 2009  oui ci  cool etre en centre algerien ou ya tous ce que vous vouler esser bien de visiter mon site  www.djelfa.org  est apres on peut faire un programe  je peux programier  ca pour vous tous 10.....20  ya  un cant de  nos fortes ci geniale  abientot..@°+°

How to get there? Train, Airplane, Car, Hitchhiking..?

yes! this is our castle! it is empty right now, but we keep it in case of napoleon comes here and tries to burn Molina again... Molina never surrenders! and napoleon burnt the city... :-) There are two ways to visit the castle, the illegal one and the legal one, we'll talk about it in the assembly...

How to reach here... this is a problem. It is far away to everywhere.

By plane, the best is Madrid airport. Valencia and Zaragoza are also nearby. Then, in any case, you have two hundred km to come here. You can rent a car in the airport or come by bus.

By bus. There are buses from Madrid , Valencia and Zaragoza. There are not many so attention to the schedules.

Madrid - Valencia  http://www.samar.es/frgrsamar.htm 

Zaragoza  http://www.agredasa.es/horarios.php 

There is no train.

By car. Molina is in the national road N211. From madrid, take A2 direction zaragoza. Get out in Alcolea. From Valencia, take the highway to Zaragoza. From Zaragoza, take the highway direction Valencia :-) Get out in Monreal.

For JY, Down down down to the basque country, cross the border in Irun and down to Pamplona and down east to Zaragoza. About 1000 - 1200 km, one day driving.

For the germans, down to France, Lyon and down to the border in Catalonia. Meet kiwiflave in Barcelona :-)

Hitch hicking in Spain? are you kidding? 

 

Wow, it certainly looks wonderful! Thanks a lot for all your research, Quique!!!

Not so important for the GA, but we have a baby, so how hot is it usually in May / June?

Would we have to prepare the meals or would it be hostel staff?

 Now, what does everybody think of it? Who would join?

 Already looking forward to it....

Hi Guys,

the place looks amazing but for me the problem is the distance between airport and the place. If I can only come over the weekend (no days off) than spending 3h one way to get there from an airport will take too much of my time...

When it comes to dates, I cannot do it on the weekend of 17th of MAy but I really would like to come!

 

Maria

Hi guys!Why not Tunisia ;) I am preparing on Mai (first week) the first camp of Arab travelers, in south Tunisia in aim to organise many conferences with students and motivate them to travel (using BW, HC, CS..)

After we go to desert for 3-4 days...You can join us..

(link to see details of our meetings : http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=34163538682 )

Chokri 

 

Hi Jean Yves !

Sure, I posted a topic in the forum here with all the details :

http://www.bewelcome.org/forums/s640

The idea is because our camp goal is to promote all actions that make people closer, we had invited many big travelers to speak directly with students of this city (many conferences are planned with students of 5 universites about the importance to meet the other, travels,...), you can also join us to speak for one day with theses students about BeWelcome..

In the same time, as we are preparing all logistic, we can prepare for you everything you need (meetings rooms in the student cultural center, Internet is available for sure (adsl 1giga in Tunisia), accomodation, etc.

So this will make many events and actions in same big camp and as we are preparing for our group, it is easy for us to prepare for you also... 

 

This is where we can hold the assembly, the former Molina high school, now an offices building. Next pics are: the "hotel" and the sourroundings, my cherokee territory.

 

Competing with choukri... sorry, yours is a very good proposal and I would like to go, but I can't this year... I have plans already. Otherwise, your idea tempts me a lot... i would cancel my offer or offer it anyway but without me and go there with you!

I would keep it in mind for next year. In the meanwhile, I want to meet these lovely people so I still keep my offer.

manhattan, you said?

@ Maria & Enrique,

 Yes, true that it is quite a long way from the airport, but then again remember Monnai, that was also in the middle of Nowhere (no offence intended to Pierre-Charles who helped organizing it) and I heard from many people that it was the best camp ever.

 Sometimes holding it in a far-away place may bring the most motivated members.....mmmh, having said that, let's hold it in Iceland or Greenland :)

May be I should give you more informations to help you to take your decision :

 

- The date of our Big meeting is 02-06 May : between two Fridays of holidays of 01 and 08 of May
- We are now in very close contact with local cultural autorities who promised us to support our action, we
asked to have many things : transport for free (bus with driver), conferences rooms, accomodation, diners, etc. We start to
receive some confirmations and we are quit confident to have more (as it is the first time an event like this took place in Tunisia)
- Many media confirm that they will be there :local television and many newspapers and radios (we are now trying to get an interview with Aljazeera)
- I was in Monnai camp witch was very much fun, but our Big meeting is different : We expect to go to work, attract attention of people, media, etc. then
after this work we planned to go to have some activities/rest in the desert
- The place of the meeting is not touristic city, it is autentic tunisian city , witch is for us is more symbolic to speak with theses people little isolated from
the world, but Gabes is on the sea, and very close to mountains and desert...
- You need two full days to work so you can choose either to make them in Gabes (city where conferences took place) or in Matmata (here you are really isolated..)...

If you tell me how many persons you are and what do you need exactly, I can make some calls in Tunisia to confirm what exactly you will have (hotels, etc.)

Merci,

I agree to Fabian. Neither a southern Tunisian dessert town nor the middle of medieval Spain (:-)) are really suited for people who at the most could attend an afternoon or two. The place should be easily accessible to the majority of volunteers with close airport (low cost even better).

Unfortunately I can t contribute anything more productive. As a freelance journalist I might or migh not have time :-(

come on, who is going to what place?

1. medieval Spain

2. Tunisia dessert

3. Essen linux

any other serious else? 

I will go to Spain. I think I cannot go to any other.  So Spain gets one vote/one person.

what about the rest of you? the place that gets more people wins. 

No, you cannot sky in Molina. We have snow in winter but no sky resort...

Anyway, I cancel the Molina offer. Guys, you will make me mad. I need to organize everything, talk to many people, give money in advance... and nobody says anything for sure. Thus, no Molina.

 

Sorry Enrique, it was and still is a good offer but given the open nature of this commmunity, its difficult to come to some agreement quickly. I am sure there was no slight / offence intended! We don't have anyone saying the event takes palce in X between X and Y. Thats simply the nature of BW.

Given that most members who have have shown most interest are European, i think it it should be in Europe, preferably beside  a low cost airport/ ferry port with access to a campground.  I would like to attend ..if such an event comes to fruition but it needs a 1/2 volunteers who are better located and more motivated than I. Lets try and keep the discussion going and see what happens!

 

 

at casa-viva.blogspot.com (porto) it's posible to meet-sleep-cook-www- and merge with other activities at the same time.

local people could help in the event, not sure about how much in the publicity.. you can come earlier... 

there is ryanair at porto and also at santiago(around 50$ return to porto) , not sure about if vigo(20$ return to porto) or lisboa(30$).  

 sorry not have posted it before, but i was sure about the dates of it and mines

i surely should be still there by then

I think May/June is a good date because it fits our yearly rhythm. Also I agree with subaculture that the meeting should be in Europe this time because by far most of the volunteers come from (Northern) Europe. With a good meeting outline, a voting opportunity and maybe even video conference facilities most interested people could join in one way or another. 

It's now up to the BoD to make a decision, I guess. After all it's almost April and things need to be planned:-)

P.S. If the meeting is in June and somewhere around Germany I might be able to join :o)

May be time is coming to try to start to make a choice.

Personnaly I would love doing it in Tunisia, but since the very beginning of this forum, May first is a bit early for a BV GA.
@Chou33: do you think next year you will do some similar event ? Given time may be we could merge the opportunities ?

@All : I really think that The Tunisia project of Chou33 is an intersting one (I don't only says this because a friend of mine has great opinion about Choukri) If you think you could join it say it, and also try to think how cool it could be to do a GA outside from Europe !

 @Thorgal67 : France could be good, Rennes where BeVolunteer is registrated to, but  someone has to organize it, really I cannot do it.I don't think the offer of lolievar83 in France too is reliable, in fact I have no news of her

 

So are they last offers ? When shoudl we start the vote for the place (and then the time) ?

Hi all

Personally, France or Belgium would be best for me. Spain would be ok too, but the main thing is public transport nearby. Also, that the GA is not on 1st of May.

Regards

Peter - Fake

To keep this thread up to date I paste the email Frank sent to the BV members today: 

The BoD are happy to inform you that the next (3rd) General Assembly meeting of BeVolunteer will be held in Grimbergen, Belgium.

Grimbergen, located 10 km north of Brussels, is easily accessible by plane, public transport, HH, or cycling.

We have created a poll on the BeVolunteer Forum and would like you to help us set the date for this event. : http://www.bevolunteer.org/forum/index.php?topic=1705.0

There are two options :

- June 20 & 21
and
- July 11 & 12

Please choose the date that suits you best. As always we will try to make sure as many members as possible can join us, whether it is in real-life or online. But we hope most of you can make it personally to Grimbergen.

See you all soon!

[edited by BWADMIN link problem @Florian: (from jeanyves) This bug is a pain uneasys to fix but we will find it]

Hello,

Do you have a timetable set for the days already? It would be good to know for my plans that at what time does everything start on the 11th. We will arrive from Amsterdam on 11th.

Cheers,

Hannu

Hannu, we would start the GA at 10 am on 11th

i thought the GA and the media event afterwards were supposed to be open to everyone. with exception for the voting rights of course....

but i don't see any advertising on the be welcome main page. the only hint i got, was the newsletter from june 2009.

and so far advertising might be good, as there are only 9 confirmed participants...

 

i don't know yet, if i'm able to take part. but for me the journey to brussels only makes sense for the whole package (GA, even without voting rights + media event)

kiwiflave, that parallel meeting in berlin also sounds tempting...

 

johannes

Is it realistic to be hosted in Brussels?

I am so sorry that we cannot come to the GA.

But we are going to Poland this weekend.

I wish you a great GA and hopefully we will see us next time.