Report of the Dutch AGM 2017 [Luc Trigaux]
The Dutch 41 Club AGM took place in Sneek, a small costal city in the North of the Netherlands sitiuated in the birth province of Doutzen Kroes. She was unfortunately not present at the event. Sneek is a pretty romantic and quite touristic place and so it was ideal for a late spring meeting.
400 guests attended the party throughout the weekend from 9th to 11th June. Of course, all these people were not there for the 41 club AGM only. Nor for Doutzen Kroes. The 41 association is still small over there – it is just 2 years old with only 10 clubs but it is growing. So the idea was to have a common AGM together with Round Table (almost 200 clubs) and Ladies Circle (about 70 clubs). So 3 clubs, one AGM.
The main venue chosen was a large 4-star Van der Valk hotel. The three AGM meetings and respective banner exchange ceremonies were in separate parts of the hotel, with banner exchanges at slightly different times, thus allowing each national boards to attend each ceremony. The Friday Get Together party and the Saturday night gala cruise were in common. And it worked fine. The parties were really great for a reasonable cost.
About 50 members coming from 8 clubs out of 10 (2 were excused) and the Dutch national board attended the 41 club official AGM. An extra dozen international visitors completed the scene. The international associations represented included Belgium (President Didier, Vice-president Bob, IRO Luc and Past president Jean-Claude), Germany (IRO Rolf and 4 other members), Italy (IRO Martin), Cyprus (David Illingworth and France (IRO Jean-Claude Vogler).
Most of the outgoing Dutch board was re-elected except for vice-president Edwin who was not standing due to a heart condition that affected him.
In my quality as Vice-president elect I represented our International President, Bruce, who had ask me to read his message. The message was well-heard and well-received. A small debate over the name change was started by David Illingworth. However I had to leave the room at that moment to take an urgent phone call regarding the YAP programme (I am the YAP convenor for Belgium and an unexpected situation had just arisen minutes before the AGM started). So I did not hear all that was said by David. From what I could hear when I returned, it was not really in favour of the said change. There were no further discussion about that point.
One of the interesting information during the AGM was the Dutch will to take part in the YAP programme of 2019. I immediately informed Christoph Haenssler about it and we decided to talk the Dutch into the 2018 programme already. They approved the idea and have recently decided to send their IRO to the 2017 YAP convenor meeting in Frankfurt. The idea would be to organise a common event when the Yappers are in Belgium in the summer next year. Maybe a three-day test-tour to the Netherlands…
I join a few pictures of the nice and well-organised weekend in Sneek, that also included a typical cycling tour around the picturesque port-town. And also a picture of Doutzen Kroes, for the fans. ^_^!
I hope you enjoyed the reading.
Yours in 41 and continued friendship
Luc
41 International
Vice President Elect
