Greetings! This is a quick report to our WE-CAN member organizations on how our AGM went.

It went great! End of report. Just kidding! There was a very positive vibe at the AGM, held on Saturday, May 27th. We opened with an Indigenous land acknowledgement from Katherine Mass, prepared at short notice because Sharon Marshall, who heads up our Indigenous Climate Action Data Quilt project, was out of cellphone range while travelling.

So first – we have a new Board! Ten people applied for ten positions, so we elected all the nominees at once. We say farewell and many thanks to Miah Olmsted, Erin Blondeau and Whelm King, and we welcome Rene Dansersau, Rieky Stuart, and Sunil Singal!

Elected Board Members:

Alison Bodine

Casey Stein

Erik Minty

Guy Dauncey

Katherine Maas

Lily Mah-Sen

Rene Dansereau

Rieky Stuart

Sebastian Sajda

Sunil Singal

Tara Shushtarian

You can see the slides from the AGM here, which include the bylaw changes and the motion from Force of Nature mentioned below. 

Next, we approved three bylaw changes (Full text here): 

1. To redefine Quorum from 10% of members to 20 members. The original motion said ten – it was increased to 20 following a proposal from a member group.
2. To have two Co-Chairs instead of a Chair and Co-Chair. People will be appointed to these positions by early July.
3. To change the member voting process such that each member organization will be invited to nominate one person to vote on its behalf at the AGM. This is the diagram we used to illustrate the change:

We then presented our Annual Report and Financial Report. 

After Lily’s report on our fundraising efforts, some people expressed an interest in joining “100 Friends of WE-CAN” as a monthly donor. We don’t actually have 100 Friends yet – we have 14. It’s an aspirational goal! If you’d like to join us and increase our numbers to 20, you can do so here. 

We then discussed the motion from Force of Nature, which read as follows:

• “Whereas the BC Climate Movement is already aligned on many principles, policies, and campaigns;
• Whereas the BC Climate Movement would only enjoy more success if it were further aligned on principles, policies, and campaigns;
• Whereas it is important for WE-CAN to be able to actively and directly advocate for many principles, policies, and campaigns;
• Be it resolved that WE-CAN take steps to establish principles, policies, and campaigns it can champion directly and that such steps result in a clearly defined statement to the membership within four months of the new board being elected;
• Be it further resolved that WE-CAN take steps to facilitate conversations and discussions between member groups as to what principles, policies, and campaigns should be championed.”

You have a supporting Q&A for the motion from Force of Nature Alliance here. We are happy to report that everyone supported this change of direction, and the motion passed. The new Board will establish a Team to work on how we approach this and how we engage with you, our member organizations. 

We then had short presentations from Transition Sooke, First Things First Okanagan and Climate Convergence on the work they were doing – which were very inspiring and encouraging! Thank you to Alan Dolan, Margaret Holm, and Alison Bodine.  We closed with some words of encouragement from Tara Shushtarian. 

A big thanks to the 50 people who attended; we needed you to make it a success!

And best wishes to all – keep up the great work!