The first contractual period has been finished with success!
Hello all,
After certain period of silence which, however, was filled up with very (read: VERY) hard work, I am happy to share with all of you the news related to the achievements in the first half of our first year.
The news that deserves to be on the top of all achievements is that our association has been officially registered. This is a very important moment for the association, particularly having in mind how demanding and difficult can be these administrative issues.
Secondly, we have significantly grown! A lot of new members joined us and we are over 4500 members now (in comparison with about 2000 in the time of the first General Assembly). Certainly, I will take advantage of this opportunity to wish a warm welcome to all new members!!!
The growth in quantity has been followed also by the development of structure: we have established 5 Working Groups and 8 geographical Chapters. The work on the development of structure was not easy at all. We had to develop and discuss rules, procedures, programmes and many other issues, and to struggle with administrative and financial limitations in order to finish this before the end of the first contractual period.
Certainly, we have not forgot our individual members as well. We have provided a large number of Travel, Media and One World micro-grants in order to support your activities and boost your careers.
Additionally, we opened a contact form for external communication and we regularly try to respond to all communication coming beyond MCAA.
It is worthy to mention that recently has been finished the first contractual period (related to the EC tender by which the MCAA has been established) and the Board succeeded to complete our part of work.
However, all this has been followed by extremely hard work of the Board and particularly of the Executive Committee. If you sometimes feel frustrated because not receiving info in time, because of certain decisions or too modest funding, please do not be angry on your Board. We are established by a tender where many issues have been fixed in advance, we depend largely on EC administration and primarily, on the quality of services provided by our contractors.
It also means that we invested a lot of efforts and energy to get better conditions for our work (in line with relevant regulations), as in the first contractual period they were at a very low level. We have promises that with the new contract the situation will be improved and as I could notice, the first signs are already visible. However, there is a lot of room for improvements and we still have to see what will be results in reality.
Having in mind that the Working Groups and first Chapters have been established, I expect many more activities in the period in front of us. One of my important goals is to improve communication and cooperation – at all levels.
You are all cordially invited to join our efforts!
Best wishes, Snezana