Monday, April 14, 2008

OI America & OI Worldwide Brace for Growth Over Winter 2005

With our ever-professionalized projects, boards, website, newsletters, and administrative operations, I realized we must focus on four primary goals for 2005: growth and stability of our projects, the institutionalization of OI America, and hosting our annual Worldwide Congress and Benefit.

By March 2005 we had more than two hundred volunteers and staff around the world working with us to move our mission forward. OI Worldwide had six officers. OI America had six members of its Board of Directors, twelve members on its Advisory Board, and an International Council made up of thirty-six additional members; OI Sulawesi, OI Haiti, OI Guyana and OI Togo had an average of six volunteer board members each; in Sulawesi and Haiti we had three or four paid staff members, and approximately double that number in volunteers. Finally, we had forty-five Child and Home Sponsors. Over the winter of 2005 we were taking care of fifteen children; by the fall of 2006 we had more than doubled this number.

Members of our International Council focusing at the Indonesian Mission to the U.N.

Those serving on the OI America International Council for one year included Tatiana Briones (Mexico), Ernest Fiabu (Ghana), Paula Oleska (Poland), Rick Respicio (Philippines), Phyllis M. Cort (Guyana), Hubert Eteh-Benissan (Togo), Pranav Gupta (India), Michel Teko Kinvi (Togo), Claud Leandro (Guyana), Benfield Munroe (Guyana), Dhiraj Singh (Guyana), Ron Bobb-Semple (Guyana), Delia de Cameo, M.A. (Mexico), Mwende Edozie (Kenya), Marlene Flom (America), Chung Lee (Canada), Pat Jordon-Langford (Guyana), Rekkie Longkutoy (Sulawesi, Indonesia), Rumit Mehta, M.B.A. (Tanzania), and Jane Pajow-Tombeng (Sulawesi, Indonesia).

Aidan Glackin, then President of Huntington Rotary Club,
pose with check to build “Rotary House Long Island” in Aceh.

No comments: