Network News

VSF Europa update November 2007

This newsletter is also available as a PDF-file, which includes pictures.

VSF-Europa Board members meet in Utrecht

The latest VSF-Europa Board meeting was held on 7/8 November in Utrecht, Netherlands attended by representatives from 8 member organisations.

Wednesday, 7th November, 2007

DIO organized our yearly Symposium “The world on your plate: livestock in a global perspective”, the issues raised in this annual event centre around animal welfare and livestock rearing in developing countries.

This year DIO is celebrating 20 years of its existence and has invited experts both from the North and the South to share their experience and analysis. The conference has two goals: awareness generation and educating the Dutch public about development co-operation. The focus group of this conference consists of Dutch vets, veterinary science students, retired Tropical veterinary doctors, and others interested in the issue.

LEGAL STATUS

We decided to contact a consultant company, Bureau Gestion in Belgium, for help us in many points and get advicea about documents that need to be prepared for registration as AISBL…

If everything is ready, we can register after the General Assembly (approval GA is needed).

TRADEMARK REGISTRATION

After some discussion about registering parts of the name or name-combinations, about current problems with other organizations using our name, and about alternatives for name-registering, we decide to not registering any name and start to think about working with a certificate system.

GENERAL COLLABORATION AGREEMENT

Is still pending, it’s agreed that a working group of three people was assigned to prepare a document. Working group consists of Carline, Jenny, Alessandro. Final draft finished by the end of February-beginning of March.

FINANCES

Invoices 2006/07 have been sent. Everyone to check whether it has been paid. For more simplicity, Patrick Ruppol will manage the finances of the organization until the next board meeting. He will also find out how to do this and decide whether he will be treasurer.

FUNDING AND REDRAFT OF EU-PROPOSAL

A friend of Alessandro is EU consultant. He wants to help us with this proposal. Alessandro agreed with him on ‘no cure, no pay’. But if the proposal gets granted, the consultant will receive 2.5% of the co-financing amount (which will be around 5000 euros). We go on with the proposal of Michele and submit it the coming call (2008), with the help of this EU consultant. Concept note for EU must be sent around for agreement by members in December, and must be submitted to EU in January.

We have to submit it as consortium with one leading NGO. This leading NGO should be an organisation with experience in being leading org in big projects. Carline, Concep and Jenny will ask in their organisations whether it would be possible to be in the lead. And come back with a decision by the end of November.

CASE STUDY

We decided to share topics and country according to following sharing out:

Animal health

• SIVtro – Algeria
• VSF Portugal – Cape Verde

Natural resource management

• AVSF – Bolivia
• Vetermon – Dominic Republic

Emergency relief and preparedness

• VETAID – Somalia
• VSFB – Sudan

Awareness raising

• DEP - Europe
• Vetermon – Spain

Income generation

• VSF Suisse – Congo
• DIO – India

Capacity Building

• TOG Germany – Sudan or Kenya
• TOG Austria

AVSF, VSF Spain and VSF Portugal ask offer both for graphic lay-out and printing. We choose the best one. We decided that publication would be only in English.

UPDATE DEP

AVSF is making a catalogue of pedagogical tools. All materials will be presented in a pdf document and sent to each members.

TWIKI

Levien is going to make modifications following : news only on public part; agenda only on internal part; remove planned projects; double he amount of disk space; see what can be done about spam; redirect mail to Patrick Ruppol; update mailinglist members

AOB AND NEXT MEETING

We proposed for the next meeting that all members prepare a document about organizational structures for comparison.

This next meeting will be in Lisbon, in the first or second weekend of June.