Year plan report – Wendy Rakete-Stones

 

July 2008

I was very encouraged to see that NZAA was looking towards the future and drafting a 5 year plan and I was keen to be a part of that.

I believe, the drafting of a 5 year plan can be compiled by one person but it must contain the ideas of many. It directs the future of our association and guides the NZAA as to what direction to head and how to get there. Therefore, it was important to get feedback from our associations, and members.

 

Initially, there was a lot of interest with the general feedback being that this was a great idea, and people had a lot of ideas to put forward. Unfortunately, only one person put pen to paper and sent it to me.

The most common comments made to me were, that all teams should be fully funded, and there are too many personality conflicts interfering with the progress of our sport.

To fund our teams long term we need to be looking for a sponsor and that doesn’t happen easily or quickly. To work towards that we need to have a good product to present to a prospective sponsor. We need to up our profile and professionalism, some ideas to be moving towards that could be:

·         always getting results from shows in the local paper

·         trying to get articles into papers as often as possible,

·         having the NZAA logo and /or club logos visible as often as possible,

o        Use logo on bottom of all emails

o        Smarten up NZAA letterhead – add some colour?

·         Each area commit to joining up 10 new members each year

·         Run demo shows in areas where membership is dropping to help boost numbers

·         Create t shirt or caps with some sort of Woodchopping logo on and sell to members. This could make some money as well.

 

My personal circumstances have changed considerably over the past year, and I am not in a position to pursue this plan any further. I sincerely hope someone does, and would suggest contacting someone like, Ike Tuhenga who has recently done a similar exercise with his company.

 

Finally, I would like to say, to move forward and grow our sport means change. Change doesn’t mean criticising what we do now or criticising each other, it means making what we do now better.

 

I wish you all well for the coming season.

 

Wendy Rakete-Stones

JJJ

Random Funnies -

Have you ever wondered : On Boots Children’s cough Medicine : Do not drive a car or operate machinery after taking this medication ( we could do a lot to reduce  the rate of construction accidents if we could just get those 5 year olds with head colds off those forklifts!)

 

Have you ever wondered “On a Swedish chainsaw: Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals (Was there a lot of this happening somewhere!!).