[Chapter-delegates] LoA for good or bad?

[Victor Ndonnang]

Dear Norbert,

Thank you very much for your message. Talking about building up a Chapter, supporting its growth and making it sustainable, many Chapters are in the same situation that you are describing. It is easy to recruit volunteers members for the Chapter but very few of those members are prepared to do mandatory work of the Chapter for nothing (unpaid). From developing world perspective, It is also very difficult to recruit members and ask them to pay (membership fees) for doing unpaid work for the Chapter.

I hope all this will be taken into consideration in the LoA introduction process. Globally from my personal view, the LoA is not a bad thing.

Thanks one again.

Best regards,
Victor.



-----Message d'origine-----
De : chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org [mailto:chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org] De la part de President ISOC-KH
Envoyé : vendredi 23 mars 2012 14:39
À : chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
Objet : Re: [Chapter-delegates] LoA for good or bad?

Thanks a lot, Klaus and Veni, Borka and Ed, for your analysis and proposals.

When I started to plan for a Cambodia Chapter of ISOC, I still had the 
image of ISOC as I knew it from the support we had received from the 
Internet Society, provided through the Montreal INET in 1996 for persons 
from “countries in the early stages of internetworking” – and it was 
only during the last years that I became aware that ISOC had changed in 
its setup.

Your wording, Klaus - “Chapters are subgroups of members. They are not 
an unpaid extension of the staff” - and that is paid ISOC staff. This 
points to a fundamental problem with which we struggle in our Cambodian 
environment since the beginning. There is support for projects, but not 
for building up a chapter and support its growth. We started with 25 
members in September 2010, we steadily grew to 98 at present. But we 
have not yet any solution for the future in view of my intended 
resignation after two years in leadership – to replace a foreigner by a 
national - as I do also most of the ongoing secretarial and relationship 
building work. – Nobody is around yet who is in a position and prepared 
to do what I did unpaid (while I - not any company or organization - 
provide  office equipment and pay for operations, Internet access costs, 
local travel – plus my time). And I cannot blame anybody for not jumping 
in to do the same. Membership fees? In a distant future they may cover 
such costs.

This is just to point out some implications of the present model.

Norbert Klein
President
ISOC Cambodia Chapter

http://www.isoc-kh.org
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