Meeting with the Council of Governors of the MD102 in Luzern.

I owed to my Multiple District 102 Switzerland-Liechtenstein to have the first meeting of the Council of Governors 2013-2014, on August 16, on top of my list.

The trip to Luzern, and a lunch in the beautiful old town, with the LCIF coordinator of MD102, Pierre-Alain Häsler, was an opportunity to report on the information and latest figures received during the New Directors Orientation.

With Vice District Governor Jürg Vogt and PDG Pierre-Alain Häsler, MD102 LCIF Coordinator

It appears that clubs in Switzerland are not very good at donations to the LCIF: only 2.3% of the clubs in MD102 have donated a total amount of little over 6’000.00 USD during the last fiscal year.
There is an important need of information on the activities of the LCIF and the use being done of the donations.

There is also a lack of knowledge about MJF, as a possibility for clubs to distinguish there dedicated members and as a possibility for any Lion – or non-Lion –  to support the Foundation.
 Pierre-Alain will be working on providing this information to the clubs to promote the LCIF.

During the Council of Governors, I was given the opportunity to report on the Presidents Theme, on Membership, IT, LEO, Leadership and other fresh information gathered in Oak Brook just a week before.

Several questions or concerns were raised among which I will mention three:

• The LEOs are very interested in having full access to our leadership learning programs. As I am invited to the Swiss LEOs Presidents Conference next week, I will report on this question in a next article.
• Among the over 400 Swiss delegates in Hamburg, a few questioned the election procedure. For all offices, there were only as many candidates as seats to award and some delegates might have come to Hamburg believing they could participate in a decision. This issue might be developed in a next article, but I am sure everybody understands that, with the democratic nomination procedure taking place before the convention in each concerned MD, the formal election during the Convention some times just turns out to be a confirmation.
• A third concern was the discrepancies between the membership figures in the MD102 database and those in the Oak Brook database. This some times happens temporarily around the fiscal year shift and is never an issue. This time, however, it appeared to be relevant because MD102 is reaching 10’000 members and the Council wishes to know who the 10’000th member is. In the meantime, as I write, the question has been answered and I will come back with this information.

Awarding the International Presidents Certificate of Appreciation to PCC Pius Schmid

The Council meeting was finally an opportunity to award a Presidential Certificate of Appreciation to PCC Pius Schmid, who had chaired the Swiss Delegations International Convention Committee. The MD102 had a participation of 420 delegates, whereas usually there are around 50 delegates. This was undoubtedly to be credited to PCC Pius Schmid who fully deserved this Certificate of Appreciation.