Distinguished guests
Welcome to today’s 51st Annual General Meeting of Skal International Asia.
We are delighted that so many of you could join us today.
You have been sent two weeks ago the full agenda including all of the Asia reports.
a day after the election, I reviewed the roadmap that was presented during my election campaign. I’m delighted to say that many of the points have been tackled and have been followed up and strongly committed to by the board.
We knew that in 2022 the biggest challenge we face will be the retention of our members and the second challenge will be to quickly find a home for our bank account.
For membership we have been paying a great deal of attention to how the Asian Area could help and support our five national committees and 41 clubs throughout the 15 countries that today makes up the SKAL ASIAN AREA. I am pleased to say that we have been very successful with our PROJECT 3000 campaign with a target to raise membership in Asia to 3000+ members and have seen fantastic support in all sectors but I particularly would like to congratulate the national team in India who has shown tremendous growth in Active and Young Skal membership and have fully supported Shalini and Asia’s Project 3000 with substantial numbers of young students including a record number in KOLKATA now the world’s largest Skal grouping of Young Skålleagues with 177 members – an outstanding achievement!
I am delighted to see Phuket is also bouncing back quickly and the board will revisit Phuket for our mid-term meeting in November to view the progress for hosting of the 2023 SKAL ASIAN AREA CONGRESS 1-4 June. We also have received an exceptional bid for the 2024 Asia Congress from Bahrain which will be presented to you today.
It is also pleasing to see that Kolkata is also bidding for the 2024 SKÅL World Congress which will be a world class event and possibly the best attended congress of the decade.
FOUR cities I believe have submitted bids which I understand will be short listed to two to be presented in Croatia in October this year.
Membership is higher at 2614 members today. Dushy in her excellent report sent 2 weeks ago gives you the breakdown and details however I wanted to add my thanks to all National Committees and clubs for leading the way towards growth and renewal.
Andrew J Wood