Annual meeting of the friends associations

This year’s annual general meeting of the WAS-NS friends’ associations took place in the village from May 4 - 7. Twenty-two participants, from nine countries, attended. The program included sessions on each of the educational institutions, workshops with the participants, brainstorming and strategy sessions, a meeting with second generation members of the village, a meeting with women who are active in various fields, an evening to honor WASNS founder Bruno Hussar, celebration of the first WASNS Peace Day, and a tour of Jaffa.

The intense program was intended to provide information and inspiration to those who work to support and spread the message of WAS-NS and its educational work around the world. A strong part of this year’s program was the exchange of information between the friends associations, consideration of how to improve communications and strategies for improvement of all of our efforts.

The community and the friends associations have been meeting every 12 to 18 months from the late 1990s. Many of the participants have been involved in the work of the community for years or decades; others were visiting the village for the first time. The AGM provides a rare opportunity for face to face meetings and, as always, an important part of the meeting was the interaction that took place outside of the sessions themselves.

This year, for the first time, we held the AGM in the Fred Segal Friendship Library. Participants stayed at the Guest House, in the volunteer house and in family homes.

We are still evaluating feedback obtained from the participants, which we will use to make improvements in future annual general meetings. In the coming weeks and months we will work to implement requests from the friends associations and ideas that came out of the meeting.

A photo album of the meeting is linked below.

Visit the photo album