First day of the actual retreat - Agenda and other stuff

Ok so waking up wasn’t easy and we had a late breakfast and instead of starting at 9:30 we’re starting at 10… Well this time it was out of our hands, when the three awesome cooking people arrived there were no electricity, blame the Lebanese system. So we start

Session moderated by Eagle

And we start with the Rules:
Dont chat on msn
Don’t yell at Lee
Don’t interrupt Pazuzu
Smoking has limited breaks
If you’re feeling squiggly please don’t leave, respect the session and the one making it

Agenda:

1st of all what we do in the retreat is three things: we say what we have done, then we evaluate our work and then (most importantly) we decide the strategy of next year. And the decisions are final, a lot of proposals will be proposed and we are going to make decisions about everything

Vision, Mission and CorValues: (I will not repeat all what Eagle says because well… that’s in the notes taken)

Last retreat some of there was a discussion about the use of the term “Lesbian” and it was decided that we will opt more for the term “Queer women and trans individuals”

Get more community awareness on this issue

Vision: we work to provide a better quality life for Lesbian, Bisexual, Queer women and transsexuals and transgender individuals through mutual support.

Core Values: we need to emphasize them more and add more values as we go along.

Philosophy:

Our four main goals: (and eagle thinks we didn’t do that well on them :P)
Build the activist capacity of the members
raise awareness inside the community about all sorts of oppression
Research and documentation
Creating a strong social justice movement (alliances with other NGOs, Gay Straight alliance…)

Now Keep these four goals and keep them in your mind. So let’s talk about committees:

Lee: I don’t see anyone responsible about each thing

Pazuzu: I don’t like have the idea of having someone in charge

Elf: Do we have contact people in joining the committee? And who?

Blue: let’s get papers and write the committees and their role, and everyone who comes would choose one and we would gather that info

Eagle: well you as a new member did you feel that you want to join any committee

Blue: Yes but it was not clear, and if it is not clear for you guys, then we should start from the start

X: that is why we need to start by defining the committees

Pazuzu: how about having contact people

Eagle: why don’t we just hang out the names of the people who join

X: the first step would be collecting the names of people and everything and then the second step would be hanging out the names of people

Lee: to gather ppl in committee, before everything, do you remember before the house we used to talk alot about committees…

Eagle: I’ll tell you the thing I have is that with this group of people is that we have one group that is working now and feeling that no one is cooperating, and the other grop s feeling that they are not asked to do anything. That’s the thing we were talking about since last retreat.What’s the problem?

Martin: when we first started we had a lot of energy and excitement, we were repressed and pressure and then this energy suddenly ended, when we came back to reality. Some ppl misunderstood the concept, inno we are going to change things but it’s going to take time.

Wrap up:

The problem is not the structure it’s the implementation and there should be initiatives from all sides.

Then the Eagle will talk about by-laws. And what was decided that we should reemphasize Meem’s responsibility (what is our responsibility and what is not). And we should make it clear for the new members what the by-laws are and stuff like that.