26th Triennial - Day 4

Today we Europeans moved to the front of the Hall - we were at the back before so now we have a great view and can hear clearly! more UK people are arriving each day so we are growing in number!

Day 4 began with a welcome from the World President who was encouraged to see no empty seats which she was expecting after last nights evening when many delegates danced the night away! ( WP has a very dry sense of humour!)

Sadly we began with a minutes silence as the National President of Australia had to leave Conference as her husband had died suddenly.

Then it was the turn of those standing for election to speak for one minute in support of their candidacy. (see Circular 4 although many people did not remotely resemble their photographs)

From 10.30 the voting began and the Conference resuming at 2pm after lunch.

We queued to cast our votes - see photo!

Afternoon Session

Taking Edna Junkins advice in the afternoon the Board put on baseball caps and dark glasses - this was their incognito hats!

Then the Chairman of Committees gave their reports

First the Project Committee Chairman (Green book p 11&12) She highlighted the New Jerusalem Project in Peru which provided clean water for a community with a previous high level of child deformities caused by polluted water.

Then the Mongolian Green Streets Project and lastly the work in Sri Lanka.

Closing her report with Kofi Annan's words that clean water was a fundamental human right and asking delegates to remember that every 20 seconds a child dies because of polluted water. An astounding statistic was that 2.6 billion people lack access to sanitation.

ACWW is truly making a difference.

The Promotion and Publications Commitment Chairman was unable to be in Hot Springs so the report was read by a committee member - (p12/13)

Next came the Chairman of the Agricultural Committee(p9) who highlighted a project in Sierra Leone.

The Chairman of the UN Committee (p14) spoke next - they have produced papers on the Millennium Development Goals (I have copies)

Resolution 7: Pennies for Friendship - although carried there was great discontent about the lack of scrutiny of the voting process in view of this it will be brought back to Conference for another vote on Tuesday.

Throughout the Conference photographs have been put up on screens every day - these will be available at http://acwwusa2010.shutterfly.com/ but not until we all have returned home - so try this next weekend!

There was a discussion about those not contributing to pennies for friendship, followed by the presentation of 'money boxes' for everyone to use for collecting money (I have a number of these)

Workshop reports followed, and then a report on the Pen Friends Scheme with more People needed who were prepared to use languages other than English.

The meeting closed with the information that no one had come forward to host the 2016 Conference and those interested should contact the General Secretary