Dorothy called the meeting to order at 7:00 pm and the board welcomed our
guest, Jim Beyer.
Jim Beyer served as the nominating committee for members of the 2012 WCPCA
board. He presented the following slate:
Dorothy Soper, President
Maggie Keenan, Vice President
Miriam Aiken, Secretary
Dale Morse, Treasurer
Felicia Keeney, Communications Coordinator
At large members:
Keith Beyer
James Cloutier
Josette Green
Ex officio member:
Hannah Klausman, Peace Corps Recruiter, University of Oregon
The board accepted the slate and thanked Jim for his work. The slate will be sent to
the membership in the November newsletter and the election will take place at the
December potluck.
The board also thanked retiring members Nick Bosustow, Jack Meacham, Wayne Thompson, and Bob Watada for their service.
Updates:
Dorothy encouraged everyone who attended the recent celebrations in DC
to write a short description of what drew them to the event and what they
did while there. These will be published in the newsletter.
Felicia explained that our web hosting is now moved to Site5.com. She will soon
switch our board emailing set up to a different host also. We'll be testing both
changes in the near future.
James reported that eleven WCPCA members took part in cleaning up after the Empty Bowls fundraiser sponsored by Food for Lane County on October 1st. This is a voluntary service activity that WCPCA has done for several years to support FLC. The effort was very much appreciated by the FLC staff. WCPCA received a very flattering thank you email from the staff. The names of the participants will be in the November newsletter.
While in DC and wearing the WCPCA 50th tee shirt, James took orders and some payments for approximately 20 such shirts. By email the board approved his ordering
the printing of 24 shirts. This will leave an inventory of less than a half-dozen shirts which will continue to be advertised for sale on the website. The new shirts should be
ready this week. James will mail them to those who ordered them and send an
invoice for any that were not paid for in advance. The sales price will continue to be
$15 per shirt.
We also talked about some ideas for advertising the WCPCA shirts for sale in
various places. The board feels that the designs warrant a continued effort to sell the shirts.
We noted the coming showing in Eugene of the film, "A Matter of Conscience," which is about the son of board member, Bob Watada. We'll put the relevant information in the
mid-month email to the WCPCA membership.
Dorothy read portions of a letter from the Peace Corps to WCPCA to commend the group for its celebration of the 50th anniversary on March 1st. The letter was accompanied by several copies of the Peace Corps 50th anniversary commemorative print by Shepard Fairey, an American contemporary artist. The board will offer prints to those who worked on the March 1st event and use others as prizes or decorations.
Dorothy summarized other correspondence: thank you letters from SOLA, one of the programs that we gave a grant to in September, and a thank you email from one of the organizers of the Calendar project that we funded in September. She also described
a phone conversation with Greg Rickoff of the U of O regarding WCPCA's concerns about the management of the Many Nations Longhouse. Greg indicated that there have been other complaints and that the Board of Directors of the Longhouse is addressing the matter. WCPCA also received a letter from Mrs. Lariviere, who along with Greg is a member of the Longhouse Board of Directors, acknowledging our concerns.
Dorothy reported on membership. WCPCA now has approximately 135 members with about 15 people in arrears in their dues. The membership includes 34 people who are either students or first year members and as a result don't owe dues.
WCPCA has agreed to give a presentation on "The Peace Corps at 50" to OASIS on February 22, 2012.
Dale gave the treasurer's report which showed the following balances in the OCCU accounts:
Checking: $582
Savings: $4,035
Restricted account (to be used only for grants): $1,025
Beryl Brinkman Memorial Account at the Oregon Community Foundation as of 9/31/11:
$26,652
Dale proposed a new format for presenting the treasurer's report and the
board agreed to that. The change will be soon.
Maggie was unable to attend the meeting but sent the board a memo regarding
program matters.
About 30 people attended the October 7th potluck at the Wesley Center. Our guest speaker, Enrique Fernandez, spoke about Latinoamericano/Latino American: The Hispanic Challenge, The Peace Corps Response. The talk was very well received and was followed by a vigorous Q and A in which the audience asked many questions about current life in Cuba. Mr. Fernandez is Cuban-American.
Maggie's memo included suggested dates for a fall potluck and program ideas. We learned that the guest speakers that she had in mind will not be able to come and thus talked about some other possibilities. Dale has offered to host a fall potluck. (We set the date for this potluck on Friday, December 2nd.)
The board is enthusiastic about having newly returned PCVs speak since this keeps us
in touch with current Peace Corps activities. Another program idea that the board discussed is to have a kind of fireside chat. (Dale promised a real fire in his fireplace.) We talked about a setting in which almost everyone would share one story from his/her PC days in five minutes. We might also have people contribute up to 3 photos. This would be a little like what we did at OLLI but photos might make the situation too complicated.
Dale saw this at a meeting where people were asked to respond to a question or a prompt like, "Describe your first day in your PC country." He thought that this had worked well.
The board had a long discussion about selling the international calendars that we have purchased from the Madison, WI RPCV group. We bought 150 calendars and have sold 18 so far.
Many ideas were presented. We agreed to pursue the following immediately. We'll try to market some through local stores. James will work on this. Dorothy will contact RPCV member, Robert Merrigan, who lives in Bend and works with RPCVs there to see if that group would like to buy some possibly to resell. Felicia will email those who purchased calendars through the website last year. Notices will be in the forthcoming newsletters and calendars will be available at the fall potluck. Calendars may be purchased through Paypal on the website. Those wanting to buy them directly without paying the shipping cost may do so through Dorothy. She'll keep a supply at her home. Most board members present at the meeting will try to sell calendars among their friends and acquaintances.
We discussed whether WCPCA might affiliate with one or more peace organizations in Eugene. This discussion grew out of an inquiry that we received in late summer from Veterans for Peace in Corvallis about whether we would like to work with that organization. The board declined that invitation but agreed to consider affiliating with other peace groups in Eugene.
For background information board members looked at the websites of CALC and the McKenzie River Gathering.
After discussing the matter the consensus was that WCPCA should not affiliate with another organization and remain focused on its current mission. We felt that only this position would be fully supported by the membership.
We discussed dates for upcoming board meetings and the fall potluck. We
set Friday, December 2nd as the date for the fall potluck. Dale offered to host the
gathering.
We also set dates for the November and December board meetings. Since the
board meeting, however, we have changed these two dates to the following:
November 7th for the November board meeting.
December 5th for the December board meeting.
Both meetings will be at 7:00 pm Dorothy's house.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 pm.
