Council Elections ? Deadline Monday 26th July (Midnight)

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nearlywhite

Active member
Badlad said:
The draft minutes of the last AGM don't download and show as an error for me.  The AGM agenda works fine.

I'd like to see a matching statement from Rostam in the agenda to compare with the one published for the incumbent chair.
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It's on the website now

https://british-caving.org.uk/hustings-for-bca-chair/

I had assumed that the election statements were going out on the website and in the reports section and I only found out the day before the AGM was due to go out on night shifts. The person I do feel sorry for is Josh who had his statement done ages ago and filled it in on the application form prior to the nomination deadline. I'm making a page with all the candidates and proposals going for election.

Here is the statement from that news article on the website:

My name?s Rostam and I?ve been a caver for 12 years, starting with Sheffield University (SUSS) and am now a member of the Wealden, the BEC and UCET. I?ve been lucky enough to travel all over the world and have 15 or so expeditions under my belt. Caving invested in me early, taught me skills and has brought me many lifelong friends ? cavers are some of the most eccentric adventurous people and I have so many stories as a result. I?m passionate about growing this community as I?d like to give more people the opportunity to experience what I?ve experienced.

I started out volunteering as Treasurer for SUSS, I moved the club over to online banking and built up a healthy surplus over 3 years. I continued as Chair of the club and with a bit of innovation led the club to a bumper year of recruitment despite starting the year with minimal leaders and drivers. I took this experience in leading, training and organising to Northern CHECC, and then joined BCA as Youth and Development Officer. I stayed in this post for 5 years, first learning how the BCA works and realising that we needed more than just one person representing ?Youth Caving? and set it up as a group bringing in many people. This led to working closely with scout caving, CHECC and a body of experienced volunteers shielded from the chaos and time wasting of council.

We learned from each other and achieved a lot; we represented university groups in discussions with unions, started 4 new student caving clubs, set up the emergency kit loan system, set up a bureaucratic service to write constitutions and other paperwork, set up the child safeguarding officer, made DBS checks for voluntary work for BCA members free, made BCA membership free for under 18s, started an at cost procurement scheme for BCA, took on a discrimination case against under 18s, procured legal advice and safeguarded many access agreements protecting under 18 access in the process.

I have spent the last year in Publications and Information where; I authored the demographics report, developed the proofreading service, developed a data gathering and interpretation service with input from professional statisticians, regularly sought feedback on BCA services, created a clear publication pathway and standard formatting, handled requests from the media and built a modern social media interface.
In addition to this I stepped in to provide support to the Secretary and Chair commiting roughly 2 hours a week to giving advice, doing the constitutional/operations legwork to work out what they should be doing and helped draft agendas and proposals in an effective way. I implemented many of the simplifying things that Phil Rowsell tried to drive ? like the online submission of reports, proposals and nominations. I also wrote terms of reference that constituted the new IT working group and successfully kept it apolitical. I drafted the covid recovery plan which has yet to be fully implemented.

I think I would make a good chair as I know how the BCA works, how the grassroots volunteering works and I would prioritise things that will bring new people into the sport and keep the buildings, charities and clubs full of people.

To put it more exactly I would:

? Adopt and push the Covid Recovery plan
? Increase transparency by ensuring documents are published ahead of deadlines, and record votes on clear proposals so that members know which way their representatives voted
? Actively recruit more volunteers for working groups and delegate more things from council- Shrink the size of council by giving time for what will be controversial proposals to be worked through by affected parties
? Order agendas through priority of issue importance and cut down the frequency and bulk of reports to allow a manageable workload for Council
? Automate secretarial tasks and integrate this with the rewrite of the Manual of Operations
? Be proactive in identifying roadblocks for BCA volunteers and adopting a ?how to get it done approach? rather than a ?delay it till next time? one. Change the meeting to meeting culture and just focus on groups operating continuously.
? Attend meetings of various member bodies and listen.
? Wear a BCA T-shirt (for some of the time) at caving huts at weekends so that people can chat to me if they want to, I also promise not to bring the BCA into disrepute
 
JoshW

JoshW

Well-known member
nearlywhite said:
I had assumed that the election statements were going out on the website and in the reports section and I only found out the day before the AGM was due to go out on night shifts. The person I do feel sorry for is Josh who had his statement done ages ago and filled it in on the application form prior to the nomination deadline. I'm making a page with all the candidates and proposals going for election.
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Haha, appreciate the pity! I was wondering where my statement would end up. Likewise I wonder if Allan has one that hasn't had a chance to be posted anywhere. I don't want it to become that just because I'm the only one who has applied for a post that I automatically get it. There is the option to vote against me, and those who disagree with my actions/previous votes*/politics/or just me in general, I would urge to a) reach out to me and ask why I have done certain things, I'm always open to critique and b) if I can't explain adequately why I've not behaved in a certain way (or apologised for cocking up), then please do vote against me.

*one of the big reasons I pushed for council minutes to show named voting

nearlywhite said:
? Wear a BCA T-shirt (for some of the time) at caving huts at weekends so that people can chat to me if they want to, I also promise not to bring the BCA into disrepute
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I actually love this as an idea. For any reddit fiends out there I see it similar to an AMA, and I could see long term this being a good idea for any officers to have a t-shirt that they can wear with their role on so that any BCA member (or otherwise) can fire any relevant (or wider) questions to a member of council.

I'm big on openness and accountability (in case you've missed my posts previously), and this would be a great step towards it IMO.
 
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