Meeting 01/0809 Report

The new semesta86 Exco (minus the KB reps) had their first meeting since the last election. The meeting was held in the Royal Lake Club, KL and was duly attended by me, Daq, York, Along and Raihan. Taja, Ma-g and Yuzli were not able to attend. The meeting started at around 11:00am and adjourned at aroung 1:00pm.

2 main agendas were deliberated at length:

a) Family Day
b) Funding issues

Family Day

It was noted that the last Family Day was held in 2006 in Cherating. It was a huge success taking into account that it was the first time we did such an event. However, we also noted that whilst we managed to keep the costs down, we had to do a lot of things ourselves and great efforts by some of the members.

For the Family Day 2008 (FD08), we proposed to do the event in a more relaxed but enjoyable manner. 2 proposals were discussed; an excursion trip, or 'family day'-like trip. On an excursion trip, it is more like 'makan angin' trip, a guided tour to interesting places plus our own games/events in between. Places suggested includes Kota Kinabalu (Sabah), Kuching (Sarawak) and Penang. The 'family day'-like trip will be similar to the one we had in Cherating, except that we propose to do in a more exciting places like Bukit Merah Lake Town Resort, Cameron Highland or maybe Pangkor Island.

The main issue relating to this event is the cost. Whilst we plan out the details of the trip, we would like to get consensus from all members as to how much can we consider as reasonable cost per person for such trip (a 3 days/2 nights stay for 50 adults and 60 children). A trip to Sabah/Sarawak would cost around RM1,100 per person whilst to Pangkor maybe much less than that.

Funding Issues

The Exco believe that semesta86 needs to be a self-sustained group. While we can line up a number of activities each year, the fund to operate the event is pretty much comes from the collections from members. We need to fill up our coffer not just by the collections from members, but also other means of revenue. However, before we can legally solicit funds, we need to be a legitimate body. The quickest way is to alligned ourselves with the Semesta Induk and use their organisation to do fund-raising events, or we \get ourselves legitimate (not to say that we are 'kumpulan haram' since we are not doing anything illegal...), example; by forming a co-op or running a company.

However, this issue will be deliberated further in order to determine the viability of the idea. However, we also like to seek members' opinion on this issue and perhaps share a thought or two regarding this matter.

Please post your comment or participate in the yahoogroup's (members only) discussion.