 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2003 (XXXXI 4) |
A new or redesignated staff position of field secretary; an expansion of, and an expanded role for, the current Administrative Group; and a strengthened role for the Nominating Committee — these top the list of recommendations of the Structure Evaluation Project Group to come before Yearly Meeting in a Called Session starting at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 11, at the Fourth and Arch Street Meetinghouse in Philadelphia. Continental breakfast will be available before 9. The session will end at 4 p.m. Yearly Meeting in session will be asked to consider and, if so led, to act upon the recommendations. This will be a decision-making session, not a threshing session. All members and attenders are encouraged to attend this Called Session. Each Meeting is asked to send a minimum of three representatives including its Interim Meeting appointee and the alternate (if there is one).
Friends are asked to come well prepared by reading the preparatory documents in advance. These are being mailed to Meeting clerks and Interim Meeting members. They can be downloaded from www.pym.org/sepg/index.htm. If you need one mailed to you, call 215-241-7211 or e-mail connieb@pym.org. Monthly Meetings have been urged to discuss these recommendations at their September business meetings.
The Structure Evaluation Project Group (SEPG), making these recommendations, was appointed by Interim Meeting in October 2001 to perform an evaluation of the new structure of Yearly Meeting implemented in 1998. The report of SEPG was originally scheduled to be presented at residential Yearly Meeting in July 2003, but when that meeting was canceled, a special session was called. SEPG makes these recommendations to Yearly Meeting on behalf of Interim Meeting, which heard the preliminary results and appointed a small group to advise SEPG, but has not seen or considered these recommendations.
Members of SEPG do not expect these recommendations to bring radical changes to the Yearly Meeting. Instead, they see them as moderate adjustments to a structure that is working reasonably well. In surveys of the membership that SEPG conducted during the past year, many respondents affirmed the new structure of 1998 that created the standing committees and working groups. These affirmations, as well as some suggestions for change, are summarized in the fuller report.
If there is not sufficient time to deal with all of the recommendations at the Called Session, it is expected that the remaining ones will be referred to Interim Meeting for decision and action.
Members of SEPG and their Meetings are Frances N. Beer (Newark, DE), Dorothy H.L. Carroll (Birmingham, PA), Gretchen Castle (Doylestown, PA), John M. Caughey (Moorestown, NJ), Robert Dockhorn (Green Street, PA), John P. Kelly (Princeton, NJ), H. Paul Kester (Newtown, PA), H. Taylor Lamborn (Reading, PA), Susan R. Makler (Abington, PA), and Marilyn Trueblood (Gwynedd, PA).
Last modified: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:18 AM