Medsin Autumn General Assembly

Medsin's Autumn General Assembly was held in Manchester this weekend, the 7-8th October, and was a great success.

Bal the Showman

The weekend included much discussion, debate & training and included voting in of three new branches, a new campaign and one affiliate project to the network. See below for more details.

Evaluation of the weekend by participants and plans for improvement by the national committee are available here

There were presentations from projects telling the general assembly all about the great work they carry out on a day-to-day basis. These included presentations from CPRIS and TBH - you can get copies of their presentation from this page

Lizz McKiernan from Bristol inspired the assembly to come to the National Conference in a few weeks; click on the link to register to join us for a great weekend.

Voting members chose to pursue formal links with outside organsations including Oxfam, THET and the People's Health Movement. Along with this, Medsin adopted new bylaws aiming to make the organisation more environmentally friendly. You can find out more about what we voted on by reading the file on the right hand side, 'Voting Minutes'.

Alongside, the standard Medsin General Assembly, Manchester also hosted an Exchanges training day and a meeting of the UKAM2007 Organising Committee.

Bal the Showman

Overall, a great weekend was had with the highlight of Saturday evening being Vice-president for Projects, Baljinder Singh, leading 70 hungry students through a rendition of 'head shoulders knees and toes' on Manchester's curry mile.

Thanks go out to Medsin-Manchester for hosting an absolutely fantastic weekend, to Naomi Sims and Zuska Elbertová for chairing the weekend - an unenviable task which they each excelled at. Thanks also to Ahmed Ali, president of the IFMSA, for finding time to make it over to Manchester to support Medsin. Finally, thanks to all those Medsin members who devoted a whole weekend to shaping the direction of the organisation.

New Branches

New Campaign

Bal the Showman

Who 4 the WHO? - who4who@medsin.org- was elected as a new Medsin campaign, calling for more open and democratic election of the next Director General of the World Health Organisation. Medsin also released a policy statement on this issue.

New Project

We voted in MedAID - medaid@medsin.org as a new affiliate project - they supply medical equipment in resource-poor settings overseas. You can find the presentation they gave about their work on this page

Priority Campaigns

4 priority campaigns were elected by a system of single transferable voting.

These campaigns are:

They will benefit from priority website and newsletter space, extra help from Pete, our campaigns director and will be suggested to new branches as a good place to start.

Partnerships

  • People's Health Movement - Medsin affirms its support for the broad principles of the People's Health Movement (PHM) and the People's Health Charter.
  • Oxfam - Medsin agreed to work with Oxfam on their Campaign for Essential Services
  • AMREF - Medsin agreed to continue working with AMREF(African Medical and Research Foundation), but declined an official partnership at this stage due to their policy of accepting pharmaceutical funding.
  • THET - Medsin also decided to work with THET (Tropical Health Education Trust) on developing LINKS. A presentation was given by a representative from THET and is available on this page

Changes to Constitution and Bylaws

We passed several motions that changed the Medsin constitution and bylaws .

Some of these were changes that will make Medsin more environmentally responsible. Practically, this will mean that Bristol (if possible) but certainly Newcastle shouldn't use any disposable cups etc. at the conference and that we will encourage our members to use public transport to get to meetings wherever possible, as well as considering the environmental impact of any projects/campaigns they run.

Mini-Meetings

Breaking the Binder
  • Branch Presidents Meeting - Sunil
  • What does a Medsin Committee Do? - Sunil
  • External Partnerships - Pete
  • Global Health Magazine - Gerard
  • What's in a Medsin Name?

Activities Board Meeting

Training Sessions

Training sessions were run by qualified IFMSA trainers covering topics in leadership, meeting techniques, motivation, project management and time management. The feedback from these sessions was very positive, and a combination of the above sessions are likely to be running at the national conference, in addition to project planning and handover, which were requested at the AGA by members.

Last updated on Monday 08 September 2008 at 18:42.