From ayenssen at rogers.com Wed Jan 2 22:07:57 2008 From: ayenssen at rogers.com (Angela Yenssen) Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 22:07:57 -0500 Subject: [fvc-wat-announce] Newsletter Fair Vote Canada Waterloo Region Chapter In-Reply-To: <765997.68975.qm@web57605.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <765997.68975.qm@web57605.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001201c84db5$d7227c80$c51ced63@Rodney> FAIR VOTE CANADA WATERLOO REGION CHAPTER NEWSLETTER ISSUE #1, 2008 HAPPY NEW YEAR AND ON WITH THE BATTLE! I wish a joyous and prosperous new year to all members of the Waterloo Region Fair Vote Canada Chapter. Now that three months have passed since the referendum vote, and the hectic holiday season is behind us, the time has come to resume our activities to advocate for a fair voting system in our province and country. My intention is that this newsletter will be the first of four newsletters that you will receive throughout the year (one for each quarter) to update you on chapter activities. Please let me know if you have ideas for newsletter content or have an article to submit. I also welcome suggestions for chapter activities. I look forward to working with all of you in the coming year to continue the fight for a better democracy! Angela Yenssen, Chair, Fair Vote Canada Waterloo Region Chapter ayenssen at rogers.com (519) 747-3825 CHANGE IN LISTSERVE AND WEBSITE ADMINISTRATOR Thank you to Bob Jonkman who has volunteered to assume responsibility for administration of the Waterloo Region Chapter website and e-mail listserve. Bob is taking over this position from Paul Nijjar. Paul established the chapter computer infrastructure. We thank Paul for his efforts and wish him well in future endeavours. We look forward to working with Bob to continue our regular communication with current members and to recruit new members through the Internet. THANKS TO RETIRING BOARD MEMBERS Our chapter has lost two board members in the past two months. Brian Tanguay resigned from the board due to the need to balance his multiple commitments and hectic schedule. We thank Brian for his hard work during the referendum campaign. He won the award for completing the most public debates for our chapter during the campaign! Derek Kraan has also left our board since he is traveling overseas to study for the next few months. Derek was one of the founding co-chairs of the chapter. We thank him for his hard work and dedication to start the chapter and raise awareness about MMP during the referendum campaign. WELCOME TO NEW BOARD MEMBER Derek and Brian's resignations reduced our chapter board to three individuals: Angela Yenssen (chair), Kevin Smith (secretary-treasurer), and Shannon Adshade (member at large). Fortunately, Donna Reid, the leader of the Cambridge Vote for MMP team, has agreed to fill one of the vacancies on the board. Donna has a long history of political activity and social activism, and is a fantastic addition to our team. Welcome aboard Donna! CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS FOR THE BOARD OF THE CHAPTER We still need to fill one of the vacancies on the chapter board. Our by-laws state that we need five to seven board members to operate our chapter, so we need at least one more volunteer to join the board to keep the chapter viable. Our annual general meeting will be held in late April so anyone who steps forward at this point to volunteer is only committed to April. The meeting schedule will not be rigorous because the course of our local activism will be somewhat uncertain until a provincial direction is established (see article below). We need to have a full slate of board members elected at the annual general meeting so that we do not have to disband the chapter. Please contact Angela Yenssen (contact information above) if you are able to join the board until April. Please also consider running for the board in April so we can continue our chapter for another year. PROVINCIAL TEAM TO DEVELOP A STRATEGY FOR ELECTORAL REFORM IN ONTARIO Fair Vote Ontario has established a strategy team to develop a plan for advocating for electoral reform in Ontario in light of events related to the referendum campaign. The team will begin meeting in January. Angela Yenssen, Chair of the Waterloo Region Fair Vote Canada Chapter, will represent Waterloo Region (and apparently also people in the 25-35 age demographic) on the strategy team. There are nine other members of the team: June MacDonald from Toronto (currently President of Fair Vote Ontario because Joe Murray resigned after the referendum due to family commitments), Wilf Day (long time member of the Fair Vote Canada board and the organization's legal expert), Linda Sheppard (leader of the Toronto Fair Vote Chapter), Stephana Johnson (rural Ontario representative), Gerry Kirk (Northern Ontario representative), Rick Anderson (referendum campaign chair), Peter Black (head of local organizing during the referendum and eastern Ontario representative), Mark Greenan (student/youth representative), Larry Gordon (executive director of Fair Vote Canada). Angela Yenssen will keep Waterloo Region Chapter members updated about the strategy team's progress. Please forward any suggestions you have for a provincial strategy to Angela, and she will convey them to the strategy team. WATERLOO REGION STRATEGY NEEDED The board members of the Waterloo Region Chapter will be meeting over the next couple of months to review the referendum results in the region in detail and to formulate a local activism strategy for the next year. Our referendum postmortem analysis and strategy suggestions will be presented to the membership at the annual general meeting. Please contact Angela Yenssen (contact information above) with any ideas for the board to consider. Please also contact Angela to inform the chapter board of your interests if you would like to assist with chapter activities other than joining the board (such as letter writing). Any contribution that you can make to this cause is valuable. Knowing the volunteer base and interest for the chapter will help board members to plan our strategy for the future. Although the referendum result was disheartening, the process has at least started a conversation about electoral reform among the members of the general public in the province. If we continue our fight, we still have a chance to make our dream of a better democracy a reality. Let's make 2008 a year in which we raise more support for our cause! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: