Girlguiding at International Conferences: Monday - new members, strategy and opening ceremony

Monday

The first official day of Conference with a Extra-ordinary General Meeting to tidy up some business from the 35th World Conference that took place in Hong Kong 3 years ago. This was related to a change in where and how WAGGGS is registered as a UK Charity - a very technical way of getting Conference started but an important part of our governance.

After this we were able to get started with the opening of the 36th World Conference and moved quickly on to the first votes; appointing the Chair of the Conference, Tellers and some interesting constitutional amendments. The conference voted in favour of a series of motions proposed by the World Board that now allow for both motions and amendments to be proposed during the Conference itself, this will allow much greater opportunity to Member Organisations (MOs) during the week to raise and act upon important issues that arise from discussions.

Our electronic voting pad for the week!

This also means the Procedural Team (who make sure everything we vote on fits within the rules and regulations of WAGGGS) and team of translators have a very busy time on Tuesday evening getting all new motions and amendments prepared for distribution in time for discussion and voting on Thursday!

Several of the blog readers will know about the incredible team of interpreters and translators that work very hard throughout the conference and we're really proud that Jo, from Cheshire Border, North West England is the Chief Interpreter and doing an excellent job.

One of the most amazing and important voting sessions of the conference also happens on the first day, and that's voting in of new associate and full members so they can fully participate throughout the rest of the conference. Excitingly the conference voted and passed a motion that now allows a prospective MO to go straight from no membership to Full Members without needing to go through the Associate membership step.

Albania and Niger both became Associate Members, Aruba and Syria changed from Associate to Full Member and Azerbaijan and Palestine, with the new motion passed, became Full Members.

We are lucky to be sharing our conference table with Azerbaijan and share in their joy of becoming full members. Aruba has been a UK GOLD project since 2016 so them becoming a full member was a bittersweet moment, as unable to attend the conference at the last minute due to circumstances outside of their control.

During the membership session we heard from the World Board and Region Committees about some of the outstanding work that has happened in the last trienium. Some highlights:

quadrupled membership tripled to has reached m .m in 2017 and ambition of million by 2020 in Africa

Asia Pacific Region on becoming the biggest Region at .million members and well on target for million by 2020

After a quick sugar boost of chai and biscuits we were ready for the World Board nominee presentations. Catherine did an excellent presentation (watch it here!) and it was great to hear from all 9 candidates about their skills and passion for Guiding.