Today, Tuesday, February 1st, was our second full day of meetings. We started again at 7:30am with meditation in Jonathan's tea-house. Over breakfast, we sang "Happy Birthday" to Jonathan's wife Margarita. Jonathan and Yoland also sang the Spanish birthday song Margarita also sang the King David song in Nahuatl, the language of the local people. She mentioned that the suffix "-ita" or "-ito" in Nahuatl signified smaller. When she and Jonathan first met and all of his friends called him "Jon", she took to calling him "Athan" as a pet name. Over time, this became the more endearing "Athancito", which we sometimes hear her call him. :-) We got into a discussion of how my name -- "Don" -- had been misunderstood in Latin American countries as being my title, and how this had led to assumptions about status that had interfered with building relationships. Several suggestions were made for alternatives. "Donquito", in imitation of Athancito, was ruled out since it means "little donkey" in Spanish. Margarita suggested basing something on the last part of my middle name -- "Hudson" -- possibly "Son-so", which is fine in Nahuatl, but means "stupid" in Spanish. I wasn't having much luck until Jonathan pointed out that the longer form of my name in Spanish -- "Donaldo" -- is not as unusual as it used to be since there had recently been a Presidential candidate with that name (the only "Donaldo" he had ever heard of). "Donaldo" it shall be, then, in future introductions. After breakfast, we gathered again on the terrace outside Linda's room to continue our meetings. We started by reading aloud the Preamble, Purpose, and Principles of the URI. (They can be found online atwww.uri.org/about_uri/charter/preamble_purpose_and_principles) We also read the description of the role of Trustees in the Charter. We do this often at URI working meetings to feel more grounded in the basics of our organization. We use the term trustee in its truest sense: URI Trustees carry the trust of the entire global URI membership, charged with representing their interests in the larger body. The Trustees of URI are exemplary leaders who manifest the vision and values of the Preamble, Purpose and Principles through their actions, and have a deep commitment to serve the whole of the URI community. Wow! That's a lot to try to live up to, and we all felt the weight of that responsibility in approaching our deliberations. Then we reviewed the Narrative Report covering what had been accomplished in the Multiregion from since Jonathan returned in mid-November 2010 to yearend, which the CCs already received directly from him. We also reviewed the region’s Work Plan for the first three months of 2011 in terms of Goals (Services provided to the CCs) and Intended Results (Intended Accomplishments by CCs) and worked out detailed steps to take to achieve the Goals. We looked at shared governance in the Multiregion, nurturing of CCs, and our Seed Grant program. We divided tasks into what could be accomplished in the immediate three month period and what should be considered in terms of annual or more long-range goals of the Multiregion. The CCs’ written comments and suggestions were always used as the starting point in our discussions. Highlights from the morning... * The Trustees agreed to assist the RC and Webmaster in the collection of news and stories from the CCs for inclusion on the website (www.urimulti.org). * We agreed that the Multiregion, more than any other Region, has an ethical obligation to be bilingual and that we commit to working towards all of our materials being available in both English and Spanish. The idea was floated of a "Translators CC" of folks who might be interested in providing translation assistance within the URI. * We realized that the Multiregion doesn't have a representative on the CC Approval Committee and agreed that Linda would be our person on that Committee (which is supposed to include one Trustee from each Region). Before lunch, we started working on the requirements for a new, permanent Regional Coordinator. We started by reviewing the input sent to us before this meeting from many of the region’s CCs with their thoughts on what qualities and skills were necessary in a RC for this unusual URI region.. We used the URI's Manual of Standard Policies and Practices for Regional Development and let it be our guide through this process as we worked out the steps through which the Regional Leadership Team and the Hub Staff could work together to create a new RC position, announce it, evaluate applicants, and make a decision. For lunch, we went to a local restaurant to celebrate Margarita's birthday. Some of the local dishes cannot easily be found in any Mexican restaurant I know of in the USA or elsewhere. I am discovering that Tepoztlan is an ancient town with a Colonial history from the 16th Century but an indigenous history that goes back millennia. After lunch, Jonathan and Linda began incorporating the fruits of our discussion into the existing URI job description of a Multiregion Coordinator. They focused on the qualities we would look for in applicants while I worked on identifying pending matters which required our attention for the 2nd half of our brief meeting. Yoland used time to catch up on other, pressing URI email. We reconvened around 5:30 to compare notes and finalize our plans for tomorrow. By 8pm, we were getting a bit fuzzy in the head and joined Margarita in the kitchen for some coffee and "pan dulce". We had worked about nine and a half hours today and are getting a bit tired. We called it a night and I came back to the room to get a shower, make some corrections to yesterday's post, and write tonight's report. Meanwhile Jonathan and Lance got yesterday’s blog onto our web site for you CCs to see. Good night and Blessed Be from Don Frew, Global Council Trustee at Large
